jeramie cadle's List: hurricane sandy

• • ONE OF THE MANY strange phenomena spotted on the streets of post-Hurricane Sandy New York were lines of Manhattanites waiting to use payphones. In the late 1990s, when the city had a total of 35,000 payphones, this was a regular sight, but now that more than 90 percent of New Yorkers use cellphones, the number has dwindled to less than 12,000.

• Like most people on the East Coast, I spent Monday night hunkered down with water to last me a couple of days and a good supply of food that wouldn't need cooking. After the sun set, I drew my drapes, moved away from the windows, and watched the storm electronically.
• I wasn't alone in that, either. Hundreds of thousands of friends, strangers, and government officials exchanged links, photos, rumors, warnings, and corrections about the progress of the storm on sites like Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
• Amid the updates about flooding, fatalities, and fine wine opened to pass the time, there appeared a strange phenomenon: people tweeting to say that their power had gone out. While millions went without power, signal failures were few and far between, relatively speaking. As whole neighborhoods went dark, mobile phones stayed online, allowing us to exchange Internet telegrams while chaos howled outside.

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• Hegemony over the car adapter that provided precious power resembled a scene from “Lord of the Flies,” according to Gail Horwood of Scarsdale, N.Y., an executive at a consumer health care company. Bridget, 15, and Lila, 11, unearthed every ancient defunct flip phone in the family’s past and tried to arrange sleepovers where they could recharge. There was a throwback moment: Lila had to study for a test of state capitals, so as the lights were flickering just before the blackout, she found a childhood jigsaw puzzle of the United States. But any resourceful return to old-school methods were not expected to last.

• Hurricane Sandy marked a shift in the use of social media in disasters. More than ever before, government agencies turned to mobile and online technologies. Before, during and after Sandy made landfall, government agencies throughout the Northeast used social media to communicate with the public and response partners, share information, maintain awareness of community actions and needs, and more.
• Throughout Hurricane Sandy, the public turned to social media for updates and assistance, and more than ever before, response agencies, organizations and community groups used social media to organize and direct resources where needed. Twitter and Facebook were used extensively by individuals, first responder agencies and utility companies to relay messages and information, share evacuation orders and provide updates on the storm. For example, the New York Office of Emergency Management provided hourly updates and evacuation orders via Twitter, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie relayed updates about the storm, aid and evacuation orders via his personal Twitter account.
• New York City, with support from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, began using social media for a variety of purposes after Hurricane Irene in fall 2012, enabling the city’s services, offices and departments to engage and inform the public through digital means. Even before Hurricane Sandy, the city’s social media presence attracted 3 million followers across more than 300 city accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more. In addition to managing NYC.gov, the city maintains numerous channels, including Facebook pages, Flickr, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter (in both English and Spanish) and YouTube. Throughout response and recovery to the storm, these channels provided the city with the means to share information in various formats, enabling people to find and consume information as they preferred. 
• Throughout the storm, NYC Digital, a part of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, monitored social media for public reactions to the storm, sending reports to City Hall on a daily basis. Questions asked on Twitter were responded to directly, and the city’s Tumblr account and Facebook page published information from each press conference. The public could sign up to receive text alerts from the Mayor’s Office Twitter account, @nycmayorsoffice, which served as a great alternative digital resource to the city’s website, once people lost power and Internet access.
• FEMA also used social media heavily in addition to traditional means, sharing information and engaging the public across multiple channels both on and offline, including face to face, television, radio, print and digital (Web, social and mobile) for preparedness prior to landfall, and to provide actionable, practical, relevant and current information to those in the affected areas and others outside of the storm’s path. FEMA published a Sandy-specific page on FEMA.gov as a one-stop-shop for all Sandy-related information, and stood up Sandy-specific Facebook and Twitter profiles as well.

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• To prepare for the next disaster, Schnirman wants better access to "Cell on Wheels," or COWs. They're cell towers that can be moved from place to place. He wants backup power, like generators, at cell towers. And he wants better access to the cell providers themselves. He said he didn't even know whom to call during Sandy.

• Starting at around 8:36 PM ET last night, as Hurricane Sandy began to flood the streets of lower Manhattan, many New Yorkers began to receive an unexpected message: a text alert on their mobile phones that strongly urged them to seek shelter. It showed up on iPhones:
• NYC was the first city to have it up and running, last December, and less than a year later, the alerts showed up where and when they mattered.
• Not all New Yorkers received an emergency alert during Sandy because not all mobile devices have the necessary hardware installed or have updated relevant software. In May 2011, new iPhones and Android devices already had the chip. (Most older phones, not so much.)
• Consumers receive only three types of messages: alerts issued by the President, Amber Alerts, and alerts involving “imminent threats to safety or life.” The last category covers the ones that went out about Hurricane Sandy in NYC last night.

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• Remember - if the power's out you can't get email on your home computer, and your landline may or may not work. But if the power is out your smart phone still works. Millions of Hurricane Sandy victims used their mobile "hand-held computer" to stay informed. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal both suspended pay-only access to their web site so everyone with a smart phone could read the latest news. 

• Lots of people turned to their cell phones after wires came down during Hurricane Sandy — only to find that cellular service has been affected by the superstorm too. Some residents were left unable to place or receive phone calls or access the Internet on smart phones.
• Fahey said that some of the county's "outlying towers run on generators," because they are "in such isolated areas. Everybody's in a tough spot. It is a disaster, but everyone is on board and we're trying to pull through."

• Radio and TV stations battled to stay on the air during the violent storms, but largely were able to continue communications with the public-often in part to backup power and transmitter systems.   But for 25% of cellphone customers in the 10 states affected by Sandy, they are without cell service!  It’s still affecting Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless.    FCC officials say excessive flooding was the main culprit.
• The water washed over cell tower locations, shorting out power and knocking the towers offline. PC Magazine reports some towers were also taken out by debris, and loss of power.  Most of the towers had backup power supplies, so even ones that were not flooded stayed on the air for a while, but the backups are not meant to run the towers for more than a day or so.
• To make matters worse, crews are still not able to reach some of the towers because the water is too high, and even if they could, the water has to recede before crews can repair the facilities on the ground.

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