For those who lost power, a nonelectric means of obtaining news, weather and transportation updates — a battery-powered or hand-cranked radio — also became essential. And for those whose local cellular sites were also affected by power outages, a landline was their only means of communicating their status to family and friends.
As we saw on 9/11, cellphones became useless in a wide area of Manhattan and Brooklyn when cellular sites located near the World Trade Center failed to function due to lack of electric power. This was also the case during hurricanes Irene and Sandy, and has been the case during blackouts and brownouts in cities throughout the nation. In all these cases and other likely scenarios, landlines can literally become lifelines.
However, there is a move afoot by phone providers to eliminate landlines. First by not installing new landlines, and then by phasing out existing landlines. Both Verizon and AT&T, the two largest landline providers, have spoken of the increased revenues to be found in the cellular market and the increased cost of maintaining their landline businesses.
From an emergency preparedness and management perspective, elimination of landlines is a very bad idea.
Prior to the advent of cellphones, landlines were the only form of telephonic communication. With the invention of cellular phones, most people assumed that landlines were obsolete. However, cellular phones function via cellular sites, which work on electricity (unlike emergency radio networks that have multiple redundancies and are unaffected by power outages). When the power goes down, cellular sites can be knocked out, leaving landlines as the only working form of communication. This was brought home rather spectacularly during the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003.
The New York City Office of Emergency Management and CityWide Disaster Services, which provides emergency communications support for New York City first responders and other corporate and individual participants, both recommend that every household have a landline in case of emergencies that include power outages (e.g., blackouts, hurricanes, snowstorms), as well as a rotary dial or pulse-tone telephone (since cordless phones and those attached to electric answering machines will not work if the power goes down). These older phones can be purchased at relatively little cost at flea markets, electronics stores and online; if there is a power outage, the landline cord can be removed from the back of the cordless or other electric unit, and inserted into the “older” unit, providing instant communication.
To eliminate extra expenses, many people have given up on landlines entirely in favor of cellphones, Skype and other wireless services. But what price can be put on preparedness, safety and peace of mind, in light of the two hurricanes that hit the New York City area in just 18 months, causing days-long power outages that affected cellular sites, leaving cellphones useless?
We call on Verizon, AT&T and other landline providers to consider this aspect of their valuable and much-needed service before they leave Americans without any usable form of communication in the event of a power outage or other major disaster.
Ian Alterman is a speaker for the New York City Office of Emergency Management’s Ready New York program and deputy team chief of the Upper West Side Community Emergency Response Team. Adam Szczepanski is former director of development for CityWide Disaster Services Inc.
