Still Monitoring Helene Recovery, FCC Readies for Milton
The agency activated its disaster reporting system Monday.
Jake Neenan
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8, 2024 – With the Southeast still reeling from Hurricane Helene, the Federal Communications Commission activated its disaster reporting system in parts of Florida Monday in preparation for another historic storm.
“This Hurricane season is proving to be a particularly active and destructive one,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “We’ve deployed FCC staff to conduct pre-landfall baseline surveys and provide on-the-ground support in targeted areas to assess the post-landfall impact to critical communications services and infrastructure.”
Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall along the west coast of Florida Wednesday night according to the National Hurricane Center. The NHC said Tuesday morning “this is an extremely life-threatening situation” and that there “will likely not be enough time to wait to leave on Wednesday.”
Meanwhile, the FCC’s latest status report said 4 percent of the cell sites were offline in areas affected by Hurricane Helene on Monday – the number was more than 14 percent in parts of North Carolina that were hit – and more than 325,000 cable and wireline subscribers were without service, down from 654,000 on Oct. 2.
The agency deactivated its DIRS disaster reporting system, which telecom providers use to provide daily updates on outages and infrastructure damage, for Georgia and South Carolina Monday. It’s still collecting information on the hardest hit areas in North Carolina and Tennessee.
Rosenworcel and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr visited North Carolina Friday. The two said in separate releases they met with local officials and FCC staff responding to the devastation.
The chairwoman said she visited temporary cell sites and the Buncombe County emergency operations center and “has spoken with the CEOs of the largest wireless providers to discuss their restoration progress, what more can be done, and any unmet needs.”
“When disaster strikes, the FCC will always have boots on the ground. We collect outage data, conduct spectrum surveys to understand the state of coverage, determine the impact on radio and television, and assess capabilities for emergency services,” Rosenworcel said in a statement.
She added the mountainous terrain in western part of the state “makes communication more challenging, with many wireless towers in areas that are high up and hard to reach, often because the roads to them have been blocked by debris and decimated by flooding.”
The agency waived some rules for its Lifeline program last week to allow people receiving FEMA assistance to get discounted fixed and mobile broadband.
Separately, the FCC gave Starlink parent company SpaceX and T-Mobile a temporary waiver to provide direct-to-cell service in areas affected by Helene. SpaceX said in a social media post its satellite constellation, still in the process of being deployed, was sending emergency alerts in North Carolina and that the company might test basic texting services there.
“We are also closely monitoring Hurricane Milton and standing by ready to take action in Florida,” SpaceX’s senior director of satellite engineering said in a post on X.
