BURNSVILLE, North Carolina ‒ The ongoing loss of cell phone service in Hurricane Helene-impacted areas raises questions for survivors about safety, missed emergency warnings and the inability to reassure far-flung friends and family. Helene knocked out power to wide swaths of the South with both high winds and flooding. The destruction also destroyed cell phone towers, severing communication for potentially millions of people.
The lack of service is obvious across the region, as near the few sites offering Wi-Fi or spotty cell service. In the storm's aftermath, the town of Red Hill's 355 residents couldn’t call to check on loved ones. They couldn’t get news about road closures, who had gasoline or generators, and who needed help.
"No one knew if we were dead or alive," said Kacie Smith, 28, who runs the Red Hill general store. Cell phone companies have a wide variety of emergency replacement systems they can deploy, from truck-mounted antennas to ones carried aloft by drones or ridden in via electric mountain bike. But in all those cases, they require physical access to disaster areas, which is still being restored.
"There's a feeling of real disconnect, no pun intended, when cell phone service goes out," said Jonathan Sury, a senior staff associate at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Climate School. "There's an extreme dependency that's developed that we didn't have 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. Everyone is spending a lot of mon.