FCC, FEMA, Broadcasters and Carriers Prep for Florence Landfall
The FCC made preparations for Hurricane Florence and has staff “in the field” in anticipation of the East Coast landfall, public notices and officials' tweets said Tuesday. “Staff are now in the field preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Florence, and here in DC we are working closely with our federal partners to get ready for response and recovery efforts,” tweeted Matthew Berry, chief of staff to Chairman Ajit Pai.
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The PNs detail how licensees can request special temporary authority during the storm and provided 24-hour emergency contact information. The agency created a Florence-specific webpage gathering communications information for consumers and carriers, cautioning about “impacts from Hurricane Olivia, Hurricane Isaac and Typhoon Mangkhut.”
“The FCC is focused on Hurricane Florence,” tweeted Commissioner Brendan Carr. “The Chairman's Office has staff mobilized & deployed.” The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it has boots on the ground in “Guam, Hawaii, and along the East coast.”
Florence is projected to make landfall in the Carolinas on Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane, while Olivia is threatening Hawaii, FEMA said. President Donald Trump has granted emergency declarations for North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and the Northern Mariana Islands, FEMA said.
Carriers announced preparations through Tuesday. “Final fine-tuning measures are underway and local Network teams also are prepared to travel the coast to assist areas hit hardest by the storm,” Verizon said. CenturyLink has readied emergency crews and “initiated its internal disaster preparedness plan” to help maintain its services during the storm, it said. Windstream said it's conducting daily calls on storm mitigation efforts. Frontier Communications urged customers to prepare a “communications emergency kit” containing “quick access to important phone numbers, account information, and power charging devices and supplies.” AT&T is “prepared for Hurricane Florence with an arsenal of disaster response equipment and personnel on standby,” the company’s website said. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities “has committed agency resources and staff” to monitor the storm’s progress, the board said.
Broadcasters in the Carolinas are coordinating possible contingency plans and the state associations have been distributing federal agency contact numbers, an NAB spokesman told us. North Carolina broadcasters also held a conference call with the Texas and Louisiana state broadcaster associations, seeking advice on handling hurricanes, NAB said.
Broadcasters should be aware and compliant with FCC rules regarding accessible emergency information, blogged Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford. “Enforcement of these rules do not appear to be a partisan issue, as certain accessibility obligations have even been made more stringent during the term of this administration otherwise noted for its deregulation in other areas.”
The National Association of Tower Erectors said broadcasters and carriers should use caution. “The rush to fix a problem or deploy a site can seem overriding, but the cost of an accident is far more disruptive to a company than any service outage,” NATE said.