Tropical Storm Harvey takes out 911 centers, cell towers, and cable networks

148,000 Internet, TV, and phone customers lost service in storm's wake.

Jon Brodkin – Aug 28, 2017 4:10 PM | 127

Flooding in Houston's theater district on Sunday, August 27, 2017 as the city battles with tropical storm Harvey and resulting floods. Credit: Getty Images | AFP | Thomas B. Shea

Tropical Storm Harvey has disrupted at least 17 emergency call centers and 320 cellular sites, and it has caused outages for more than 148,000 Internet, TV, and phone customers.

The numbers come from the Federal Communications Commission, which activated its Disaster Information Reporting System to track Harvey's impact on communications services. Communications providers are being asked to submit outage information each morning, and the FCC is publishing a daily summary.

In 55 Texas and Louisiana counties that are part of the disaster area, 320 out of 7,804 cell sites were down as of yesterday at 11am EDT, according to the FCC's latest summary published yesterday. That's 4.1 percent across the area, but in a few Texas counties the cell blackouts affected more than 80 percent of cell sites.

The cell site outage percentages were 94.7 percent in Aransas County (18 out of 19 sites down); 85.2 percent in Calhoun (23 out of 27); 84.6 percent in Refugio (22 out of 26); and 51.7 percent in San Patricio (30 out of 58).

"Those counties were subject to mandatory evacuation orders, so it was unclear how many people are affected by the outages," The Wall Street Journal reported. "It was also unclear which carriers stayed online and which went down, because carriers aren’t required to disclose the information publicly."

All 320 disrupted cell sites were in Texas, as every Louisiana cell site remained intact.

While cell towers generally have backup batteries and generators, "they can still go down if they get flooded or if equipment gets blown off the tower, carriers say," the Journal wrote. Carriers were working to get towers back up and running and are offering free services to customers in the storm's path.

911 outages increase

Of the affected 911 call centers, 16 were in Texas and one was in Louisiana. The 911 problem increased quite a bit from Saturday to Sunday, going from nine to 17 affected Public Safety Answering Points.

When it comes to cable systems and other wireline providers, "there are at least 148,565 subscribers out of service in the affected area," the FCC said. This was down from 149,909 the previous day.

Comcast said that most of its outages are due to power failures. The company has suspended operations in the Houston area until "local emergency management agencies deem it safe to be on the roads," Multichannel News wrote.

There were nine radio stations out of service yesterday, but no TV stations went down.

911 call centers are struggling with call volume even in cases when they're up and running. Space City Weather (operated by Ars Technica's own Eric Berger) reports:

According to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, the city’s 911 system is being overwhelmed with calls on Sunday, many of which are not life threatening. “Please, let’s give preference to life threatening calls,” he said. Those include vehicles trapped in rising waters (the majority of deaths during flood events like this come in vehicles), and people in homes where water is rapidly rising.

Three Ars writers and editors in Houston remain dry and well.

UPDATE: The FCC posted another status report this afternoon. The number of cell site outages grew from 320 yesterday to 364 today. Cable and wireline outages surged, with at least 189,487 subscribers out of service, up from 148,565 yesterday.

There are now 16 emergency call centers (down from 17 yesterday) affected by the storm. Six call centers regained service, but five new ones were disrupted.