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moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD | Yeah, cell phones will save everyone in a disaster.... 
Told you so.  | |
|  lesopp
join:2001-06-27
Land O Lakes, FL
| Re: Yeah, cell phones will save everyone in a disaster.... We Americans never seem to learn from our mistakes.
In May 1988 I was stationed at Nellis AFB in Nevada when the Pepcon disaster occurred in Henderson some 10, or so, miles away. The phone system quickly became overloaded and people couldn't make landline, mobile of cell calls. It took more than an hour to get through to our civilian emergency management counterparts and liaison officers to begin coordination of military support to civil authorities.
I was told then that it is possible to designate priority stations within the phone systems but neither the military or civil authorities wanted to pay the added recurring expense. | |
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prestonlewis
Premium,MVM
join:2003-04-13
Sacramento, CA
 ·VoiceStick
| Re: Yeah, cell phones will save everyone in a disaster.... said by lesopp  :We Americans never seem to learn from our mistakes. In May 1988 I was stationed at Nellis AFB in Nevada when the Pepcon disaster occurred in Henderson some 10, or so, miles away. The phone system quickly became overloaded and people couldn't make landline, mobile of cell calls. As a former telephone operator, I can tell you that our training about calls from the military were two fold:
1. If they had the proper "password" you connected them to whatever phone number they wanted no matter what and did not leave the line without them knowing you were leaving (they might have more calls to make).
2. Other military calls got priority over the public.
Unless things have changed in a hurry, dial zero or double zero and tell the operator you're military making an emergency call and they are supposed to give you priority over civilian telephone traffic.
Of course, when I was an operator we were located in an underground nuclear bomb proof building with it's own water supply, food storage supplies, and bunks (which we never got to see) and Ted Turner still owned WTCG in Atlanta (later WTBS). Operators can break in on people's calls (fun), call operators in other cities ("inward Atlanta" was the answer where I worked) and the operator in another city would break someone's call and connect you if need be. If a customer cursed you, you could put them on hold for a while as punishment. They couldn't hang up or do anything until you pressed "release" on your TSPS board. | |
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