Wireless: Volunteers give voice to evacuees

The hurricane's aftereffects bring about efforts to provide wireless voice, broadband access.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina , a volunteer group of network and wireless experts has moved from outfitting small northeastern Louisiana shelters with wireless Internet access and VoIP phones to preparing a desperately needed 45M bit/sec wireless pipe for the entire relief effort in devastated Bay Saint Louis, Miss.

"I've never witnessed destruction like this," says Paul Smith, technology director with the Center for Neighborhood Technology , a Chicago nonprofit devoted to making cities more livable. He's one of scores of network volunteers from all over the country who are creating one of the few success stories to emerge from Katrina's demolition of the Gulf Coast's technology infrastructure.

As Network World went to press last week, the emergency management staff of this town of 8,000 people, plus National Guardsmen, Red Cross workers and local police, fire and government personnel were relying on a couple of satellite connections, each supporting a 2M bit/sec downlink and just a 512K bit/sec uplink. One of the links had been set up at the Hancock County Medical Center by local U.S. Navy staff. The second was at Stennis International Airport, where the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is based, coordinating all local, state and federal relief efforts in the area.

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In the wake of Hurricane Katrina , a volunteer group of network and wireless experts has moved from outfitting small northeastern Louisiana shelters with wireless Internet access and VoIP phones to preparing a desperately needed 45M bit/sec wireless pipe for the entire relief effort in devastated Bay Saint Louis, Miss.

"I've never witnessed destruction like this," says Paul Smith, technology director with the Center for Neighborhood Technology , a Chicago nonprofit devoted to making cities more livable. He's one of scores of network volunteers from all over the country who are creating one of the few success stories to emerge from Katrina's demolition of the Gulf Coast's technology infrastructure.

As Network World went to press last week, the emergency management staff of this town of 8,000 people, plus National Guardsmen, Red Cross workers and local police, fire and government personnel were relying on a couple of satellite connections, each supporting a 2M bit/sec downlink and just a 512K bit/sec uplink. One of the links had been set up at the Hancock County Medical Center by local U.S. Navy staff. The second was at Stennis International Airport, where the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is based, coordinating all local, state and federal relief efforts in the area.

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By the end of this past weekend, volunteers expected to have up and running a 45M bit/sec broadband wireless connection hopping from a Bay Saint Louis water tower west some 76 miles to Hammond, La. "We've been given access by the EOC to pretty much the city's entire infrastructure," Smith says. That means the volunteer team can commandeer one of the water towers outside town for the main backhaul connection, essentially a commercialized, high-powered 802.11a 54M bit/sec radio.

These devices, running in the unlicensed spectrum, require line-of-sight alignment. The link will probably make two intermediate hops before terminating in Hammond.

Spoking out from the water tower, other wireless links on 2.4- and 5.8-GHz bands will carry throughput to 25 shelters around the town, the medical center and most importantly to the EOC.

In some cases, Smith expects to deploy a wireless LAN mesh, using open source software from the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network project, and hardware from Metrix Communications: single-board computers in a weatherproof housing, 802.11a/b/g radio cards, and Power over Ethernet to simplify deployment.

At each site, PCs, laptops, and a combination of VoIP phones and VoIP-enabled analog phones will be able to access the radio bandwidth through a router or a switch.

Local action

This basic technology pattern and the entire volunteer wireless effort grew out of the decision by a former Mississippi river towboat captain turned wireless broadband provider to set up a similar arrangement at the Mangham Baptist Church in nearby Mangham, La., about 240 miles northwest of New Orleans.

Mac Dearman is CEO of Maximum Access, a wireless ISP (WISP) serving a large rural area around Rayville. The day after Katrina struck, he stopped at the church because it was crowded with cars. He found scores of evacuees and realized everyone was trying to use the one phone in the church office. With one of his wireless towers visible nearby, Mac and his brother Jay, a local pastor, set up a premises radio, a couple of spare PCs and a couple of VoIP phones.

Evacuees were able to start registering on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Web site, entering their names in the missing people databases, searching for relatives and calling them, at a time when government officials and emergency management crews could hardly communicate with each other.

Dearman started getting calls from other area churches that were sheltering evacuees and had the same pressing need for communications. After about four days, Dearman e-mailed colleagues about what he was doing via a listserv at the Wireless ISP Association (WISPA), which by then was working with another industry group of WISPs, Part-15.org , on ways to use wireless gear and expertise to restore communications.

Almost at once donations started flowing in, $1,100 within 30 minutes of Dearman's first e-mail. The next day, Jim Patient, president of Jeffco SOHO, a WISP in House Springs, Mo., showed up with a van loaded with relief supplies and time to spend working alongside Dearman. People kept arriving, from Seattle to Buffalo and everywhere in between, bringing more supplies, equipment, money and unflagging energy despite the clinging, wet heat, and Louisiana's vicious fire ants.

After a conference call organized by the FCC on Friday, Sept. 9, Part-15 was tasked with coordinating volunteer efforts, and WISPA's officers threw their support behind that. Both groups used their e-mail lists and Web sites to promote the cause and provide channels for contributions of money and gear. Part-15 members also were streaming into the Gulf Coast area, working with local WISPs to restore their networks and creating new ones. "We can create voice and data services of any magnitude within 48 hours of arrival," says Michael Anderson, chairman of Part-15.