When the Levee Breaks

Hurricane Katrina has shown how vulnerable our communications systems are in the face of a natural disaster. Anybody got a pencil?

The early days of the hurricane Katrina tragedy were complicated by an almost total lack of communications among the various local, state, and federal agencies tasked with disaster relief, rescue, and aid. According to published reports, communications leading up to storm landfall on August 29th were continuous. After the initial damage, inter- and intra-agency communications broke down completely. Cell phone towers were down, land lines were disrupted, portable radios soon exhausted their batteries, and rechargeable devices were unable to be recharged due to lack of power. Previously staged rescue units from the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country in the world were unable to operate efficiently because they couldn't talk to each other. It makes me wonder if we have become victims of our own technology–so dependent upon fragile systems and with no effective backups.