WRT South Florida, the eye of the storm passed directly through Key West. Key West sustained the largest and most serious amount of damage to personal housing and public infrasturcture due to the high winds and coastal flooding. Rains were remarkably light for a hurricane. Marathon Key (heavily populated) sustained probably the second serious damage after Key West. Access to the keys was essentially opened yesterday and the flow of those returning produced quite a traffic jam. Key Largo and Florida City (just on the mainland) sustained some damage and flooding. A number of power outages reported in Miami-Dade county due mostly to wind. Phone outages were on the light side. Miami-Dade metropolitan area was spared. Not aware of any reported deaths at this time. I must say that the response by the local folks and the government was quite excellent this time. I think they've learned their lesson from Andrew. Have to give a big hand to the National Hurricane Center also. I remained on-line via POTS during the entire storm (in Dade County) watching the satellite photos and reports. US1 was flooded in various points along the keys. Any serious network outages will probably be observed in the keys and particularly Marathon and Key West. I believe though, that the bulk of comm goes via the keys microwave transport though at some points it may be ground based. At 12:36 AM 9/27/98 -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
300 dead so far (200 Dominican Republic, 87 Haiti, others spread out over several different islands)
Once again, my information is limited to where DRA has customers. So I don't know about other areas.
South Florida:
Light to moderate damage. Power outage in the keys and spot outages in south Florida. Most telephone and Internet service continued to function.
Puerto Rico:
Latest word I have from people on the island, is they are still without telephone, electricity or water. At least 50% of the telephone poles on the island have been knocked down. I don't have word specifically about the satellite teleport in Puerto Rico. Currently emergency officials are working on restoring utility service to these facilities, in this order
1. Emergency services, hospitals, designated shelters 2. Water and sewerage plants 3. Telephone and other communication services
Estimates are it will be Monday before priority services have been restored. Major urban areas by the end of next week (Oct 2).
Other News:
Does anyone have any more information about Worldcom's outage last night in Mississippi? The only information we received was it involved hazardous materials.
BTW, last Friday I attended a briefing at the Department of Commerce about the process the US Government is embarking on to work on a "private-public" partnership with the "Information and Communications" sector as part of their Critical Infrastructure Assurance Program. I didn't recognize anyone from a "post cold war" company in attendence. Essentially no Internet backbone representation, with maybe the possible exception of AT&T. Not that anyone missed anything. I wonder what the press thought of the briefing. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation