When a devastating tornado hit Uxbridge, Ont., Residents came out and helped, first responders were inundated with calls for help and the town’s emergency operations center went into action.
But there was a problem.
The emergency management team was struggling due to poor internet and mobile service in the Uxbridge fire station where they were stationed, said Kristi Honey, Uxbridge’s chief of staff and head of the Uxbridge fire station. Emergency Operations, CBC News.
“We were paralyzed,” Honey said.
“We literally had to send people with cars to the control of the mission to talk about key operations.”
The use of people to physically transmit messages that are normally sent by telephone or text messages is a common contingency when the rest fail in disaster communications. That was true in Uxbridge, a town 77 miles northeast of Toronto, when the funnel cloud hit May 21st. It left a four-kilometer-long trail of destruction, flattening trees and power lines and tearing off the roofs of buildings. It also removed the backup options for telecommunications by cutting off some of the local connections to the mobile towers.
Uxbridge, Ont. Resident Allen Harrison is shown cleaning his property three days after a tornado swept through the southern city of Ontario. (Evan Mitsui / CBC)
“The problem is that all of our layoffs failed,” said Uxbridge Mayor Dave Barton.
Barton met Doug Williamson, who runs his own computer services company, WillX, in Uxbridge. So he sent a text message asking if he “knew anyone in Rogers” to help stabilize their connection.
Williamson says he wasn’t sure if Internet service providers in the area, Rogers and Bell, could establish a stable connection soon.
So I had another option in mind; recently established its own residential connection to Starlink, a service offered by SpaceX, the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk. The system uses low-earth orbiting satellites to connect customers to the Internet. He brought his round plate to his knees to the fire station and set it up in the parking lot with a clear view of the sky.
Williamson installed his own Starlink kit outside the Uxbridge fire station to restore telecommunications to the city’s emergency operations center after the tornado struck. (Sent / Doug Williamson)
Williamson ran a cable through a window to power the Internet and the VOIP cell for an operations center that had between 10 and 15 people using it at a time.
In 30 minutes, he says, everything was up and running.
“Everyone has to do what they have to do,” Williamson told CBC News. “Uxbridge is a pretty small town. This is where people have to come together and do everything they can to help their neighbors.”
Honey says Durham Regional Police officers also came to use the fire station connection and that the speed and stability of the connection did not waver.
“It was a great feeling of relief,” he said.
“It brought all our systems back online,” he said, allowing emails and constant calls to the province, outside agencies and police.
“Knowing that he gave up his own Internet … just to install a secure Internet in the fire department, talk about the culture of Uxbridge Township, neighbors help neighbors, everyone strives” .
From left to right: Uxbridge Administrative Director Kristi Honey, Deputy Mayor Willie Popp, Public Works Director Ben Kester and Mayor Dave Barton all played a key role in the emergency response. of Uxbridge. (sent / Kristi Honey)
SpaceX says it aims to bring high-speed broadband Internet to remote and rural locations around the world with its Starlink project. It has also received attention for its disaster emergency applications. Starlink has gotten used to it increase internet access in Ukraine after the Russian invasion and arm the first responsible after natural disasters Washington, Kentucky and beyond.
“We will definitely buy a Starlink system for emergencies like this. We need absolutely redundant communications,” Barton said. Williamson told CBC News that the system cost him $ 811 to set up and is priced at $ 160 a month.
“I will tell my fellow mayors that this is really important.”
Experts recommend caution
The company is now launching a portable version of the Starlink Disaster Emergency App.
But while experts in emergency management and telecommunications agree that Starlink can become a powerful tool, especially for small towns in Ontario with relatively flat terrain, some advise caution.
Starlink’s “relatively” easy-to-set-up cost and its much lower orbiting satellites than traditional satellite Internet providers make it an attractive option, says Peter Anderson, director from the Telematics Research Lab at Simon Fraser University.
But he warns that the company is in its infancy and was launched in Canada only last year, so its reliability and capability must first stand the test of time.
Jack Rozdilsky, an associate professor of disaster and emergency management at York University in Toronto, advises a “thorough cost-benefit analysis” before buying a Starlink city kit. He says it’s important to keep in mind that it’s built by a private entity with its own “idiosyncrasies”.
Barton, in the center, says the city is looking to get its own Starlink kit for emergency response situations. (Sent)
Rozdilsky points to cases where Musk’s promises were never fulfilled, such as a rescue operation in Thailand where he offered help to a team trying to get 12 young Thai football players out of a partially flooded cave.
That didn’t “necessarily work out as intended,” he said.
“We have to look at the whole trajectory of the company when we consider whether we want to make agreements with companies for an infrastructure that can be critical to disaster response.”
Rozdilsky suggests that the Uxbridge tornado case offers an important case study in Ontario.
The federal and provincial governments have invested more than $ 1 billion in low-Earth orbit technology through a Canadian company, Telesat, saying the technology can deliver much better performance than traditional satellite constellations. and terrestrial networks in emergency situations. But this service is still years away to be available.
For Barton, it comes down to one thing.
“We accept the help of those who can help us. It doesn’t matter if it’s one of our neighbors with a chainsaw or Elon Musk.”