On Tue, 12 June 2001, David Beery wrote:

From some of the reports that I have seen on one of the ARRL mailing lists is that the area is now a Federal Disaster area. Ham Radio and the many generous hams are currently assisting emergency communications just about everywhere, from the hospitals, the fire departments, red cross shelters, and even assiting line men for Southwestern Bell. It's one of those times when OCxx's, bad ass Cisco routers, belts loaded with cell phones and pagers from every company that provides service in the area, will do you no good.

Thanks to RACES, ARES and MARS for providing the mainstay of emergency communications in the effected areas!

Some ISPs can qualify for priority restoration of telecommunications circuits under the federal Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP) program. Its not too complicated, and the people at the NCS are fairly helpful, see <http://tsp.ncs.gov/> Licenses for Business and/or Utility radio frequencies are available so you don't need individual operator licenses for your operations staff. Of course, as we know, IP can run almost anything. I've set these up as part of an ISP's contingency plans. Remember, the time to set them up is before the disaster. Exchange points are obvious places for networks to connect and share emergency information between providers. It could range from an out-of-band web server to a private NOC voice bridge. As I mentioned most of the people you need to deal with are helpful. But if you need some pointers on how to contact the right government office, drop me a note. I hope some folks find contingency planning of relevance to network operators.