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Communications Wireless Networking Hardware Technology

A Technology Report From A San Diego Fire Shelter 168

Posted by Zonk from the wireless-during-the-worst dept.
netbuzz writes "Retired journalist and mobility expert Jim Forbes is among the quarter-million San Diego-area residents driven out of their homes by the horrific wildfires. Forbes has taken the opportunity to 'fire blog' from his shelter and discuss via e-mail with Network World how his personal technology and the shelter's wireless networks are holding up under the strain. 'The shelter set up a dedicated computer room with an 802.11 a,b, and g network which worked like a charm. Lots of people brought notebooks when they left their home, so there was a whole lot of IM traffic in and out of the shelter. The local cell networks were subsumed by traffic early in the day so people were texting friends and loved ones a lot."
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A Technology Report From A San Diego Fire Shelter More

A Technology Report From A San Diego Fire Shelter

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  • Fire Evacuees (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jcicora ( 949398 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @09:59AM (#21085309) Journal
    Well I say kudos to the people organizing the relief effort in San Diego. I think its great that they thought ahead to provide this kind of amenity to the people displaced by the ongoing disaster. This is the kind of project I would be glad to spend tax dollars on!
    • I agree! What a great way to keep these folks connected with their friends and family. It makes perfect sense that people would grab a laptop (among other things) when leaving their home. My laptop is where I have all of my photos, music, etc. ...and what better way to stay connected to family than with video chat or IM. I say bravo bunker organizers.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CharlieG ( 34950 )
      actually, it's more a side effect of the fact that the shelter operators need/want it to run the shelter! The has been a lot of work done on "how do we keep email up during disasters" - everything from broadband, to mesh networks, to satcoms, to sending email via ham radio (both on VHF packet networks and long distance HF links) - with the ham links, as soon as the traffic gets nto a radio outside the effected zone, the packets get routed onto the internet

    • Oh, and FYI, these WiFi spots are being provided free-of-charge by local businesses and individuals. So none of your precious tax money is being diverted from a useless war to make sure displaced people can get updated information about where to run next.

      (Sorry, I'm just slightly pissed at armchair experts right now.)

  • I think he meant consumed.

  • Now that's hard core (Score:3, Funny)

    by Critical Facilities ( 850111 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @10:06AM (#21085433)

    As you might expect from a mobility expert, he's filling his shelter time "fire blogging." And he's also answered my e-mailed questions about how the people and technology are holding up in his shelter.

    The guy is literally running for his life to escape wildfires, yet has the brass balls to 'fire blog'. If that's not worthy of a nomination to Geek of the Year, I dunno what is.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by R2.0 ( 532027 )
      "The guy is literally running for his life to escape wildfires, yet has the brass balls to 'fire blog'."

      You use the word "literally". I do not think that word means what you think it means. If he was "literally" running for his life to escape, that means his legs are moving rapidly and if he stops, his ass will suffer 3rd degree burns promptly. If you can show me how to do ANYTHING while "running for your life" other than run - and maybe scream and yell - I'm all ears.

      I think the word you are looking for

    • Re:Now that's hard core (Score:4, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @11:06AM (#21086359) Journal

      The guy is literally running for his life to escape wildfires, yet has the brass balls to 'fire blog'. If that's not worthy of a nomination to Geek of the Year, I dunno what is.

      Bah! You clearly don't know California. Evacuating your home due to wild fires here is a lot like a road closure elsewhere... a minor annoyance you have to put up with for a few days, every couple years. Where your schools might close for "snow days", we have "fire days". Blogging about it is the most natural thing in the world... You have lots of time to kill.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ross.w ( 87751 )
        Hard core?

        In Jindabyne [snowymountains.com.au] and Adaminaby they have fire days AND snow days (but usually not at the same time)

        Don't think anyone would expect wireless broadband though, except maybe skiers from Sydney.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by evilviper ( 135110 )

          In Jindabyne and Adaminaby they have fire days AND snow days

          That's true in much of California as well. Lots of mountain ranges. Right now, Arrowhead is burning. They get plenty of snow. Last year, maybe it was Big Bear (lots of snow). Maybe next year it'll be Silverwood. All three mountains, right next to each other, at the very North-end of the L.A. Basin.
    • These guys commute 3 hours every day.. they just can't go home. Hardly running for their lives but still serious because there's a high value of properties at stake.

      That said it's too bad there's not some government stockpile of 10k to 20k people willing to help out and defend the city. If only there was some group of people dedicated to helping out after/during natural disasters.
    • The guy is literally running for his life to escape wildfires, yet has the brass balls to 'fire blog'. If that's not worthy of a nomination to Geek of the Year, I dunno what is.

      It's easy and often perfectly valid to dismiss blogging as a self-induglent activity, but the fact of the matter in this case (and innumerable others), is that the information people need is spread between local news outlets, right-wing AM radio personalities (the FM folks are too busy rotating their playlists and offering commercial

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Duhavid ( 677874 )
      I don't know about "running for his life". The evacuations
      have been pretty orderly so far as I can tell ( Poway, CA,
      right in the little pocket ). And they have been called in
      plenty of time for most, AFAICT. Maybe sauntering for his
      life. Promenading? I don't see a lot of panic.

      Oh, and he is probably at Qualcomm stadium, pretty safe.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 47Ronin ( 39566 )
      A lot of organizations are taking advantage of "Web 2.0" technologies, especially since the city/county-run emergency service websites [211sandiego.org] are completely broken or abandoned [informsandiego.org]. The local public radio station KPBS [kpbs.org] is using Twitter [twitter.com] to update listeners with text/SMS emergency information every few minutes. The Port of San Diego [portofsandiego.org] is mirroring this information using a javascript-based RSS scraper of the same Twitter [twitter.com] feed and is mirroring KPBS's amazing interactive Google map [google.com].

  • Priorities CA (Score:3, Funny)

    by MSTCrow5429 ( 642744 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @10:14AM (#21085555)
    "Honey, the house is on fire!" "Grab the laptop!" "What about the kids and the dog?" "Screw them, I need my WiFi fix!"
    • I live in SD. Half of my co-workers are evacuated from their homes. There is a possibility I will get called today. Your joke is not that funny. Laptops are used for finance, important papers, etc. Instead of packing up a filing cabinet, the laptop is now the source for important information.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by R2.0 ( 532027 )
        Actually it's very funny, especially when combined with the fact that a similar thing happened to the same folks just 4 years ago, but non-fireproof houses were rebuilt in the same fire prone areas.

        Comedy Gold!

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Traxxas ( 20074 )
          Fireproof houses don't exist, even full concrete and steel structures will burn down.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ErikZ ( 55491 ) *
            Er, no not really. Yes, you can damage anything if you apply enough heat to it. But reinforced concrete buildings do not burn with normal fires found on the planet earth.

            It's one of the main selling points of monolithic domes. The second is the insulated coating that makes it extremely fire resistant.

            http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/homes/braswell_fire/index.html [monolithic.com]

            People who want to build houses made of *wood* in areas that regularly have wildfires should be laughed at.
          • Um, no. Concrete does not burn.* At least not under real-world brush-fire conditions. Neither do steel or brick. Or aluminum siding.

            Sheesh CA, you're as bad as the people in New Orleans.

            *Yeah, yeah, theoretically....

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kd5ujz ( 640580 )
              Concrete will not burn, but it will crack under heat. It does not handle rapid expansion very well. Try taking an oxy-acetylene torce to a chunk of concrete someday.
              • Silly me, I thought a brush fire was just that- brush (grass, bushes, maybe trees) on fire. Those burn a lot cooler than an oxy-acetylene mix. A concrete, brick, or earth-bermed house should easily be able to withstand an ordinary brush fire. But not one of those 3,480 C California brush fires.
          • concrete and steel will not be ignited by the temperatures produced by a wood-and-grass fire, so they're fireproof enough for the purpose of this discussion.
      • Look, if my laptop blew up, I'd be screwed, but I'm a student, and professionals should be able to afford off-site backup. If the laptop isn't a Dell but still goes up in flames, you haven't lost all of your data, just the most recent alterations. Californians have a deserved reputation for blinkered priorities and general flakiness.

      • I live in SD. Half of my co-workers are evacuated from their homes. There is a possibility I will get called today. Your joke is not that funny. Laptops are used for finance, important papers, etc. Instead of packing up a filing cabinet, the laptop is now the source for important information.
        I can agree with that... but what about the kids and the dog?

    • "Honey, the house is on fire!" "Grab the laptop!" "What about the kids and the dog?" "Screw them, I need my WiFi fix!"

      "Honey, there's a fire a few miles up the road. I've already got the kids and the dog packed up. Anything else we should grab?"

      "I heard on the news that the cell phone network is having trouble with the load."

      "Okay, I'll throw the laptop in the trunk. Anything else?"

      "Well, we still have time..."

      There, fixed that for you. I'm not sure if I'm more disappointed in the Slashdot readership for thinking the evacuations are being caused by people's houses instantly engulfing themselves in flames, or the sens

  • Isn't it great. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Xest ( 935314 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @10:14AM (#21085563)
    Isn't it great that technology like the internet has reached the point of acceptance that when peoples houses are burning down one of the main priorities is to ensure the shelter everyone has to hide in has wireless internet access and that people make sure they at least rescue their laptops and PDAs.

    I'm sure it wasn't much more than 5 years ago that people would look at you funny if you turned up in such a place and said "Right, where's the net access?".

    Oh how times change ;)

    • Re:Isn't it great. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by aadvancedGIR ( 959466 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @10:23AM (#21085729)
      It might look funny from an external point of view, but when you stack hundreds of people in shelters for days, morale soon becomes a concern as big as logistic. Giving them a way to get independant information and communicate with the rest of the world and their families is a cheap but effective way of reducing the stress of the refugees.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jollyreaper ( 513215 )

        It might look funny from an external point of view, but when you stack hundreds of people in shelters for days, morale soon becomes a concern as big as logistic. Giving them a way to get independant information and communicate with the rest of the world and their families is a cheap but effective way of reducing the stress of the refugees.

        Communication is the best part. It's total chaos when you go through something like this. I went through the last three hurricanes that hit South Florida and I have to tell you, having a text-enabled cell phone was a great help. The cell towers are up and running before the landlines and text messages take up a lot less bandwidth than voice calls and your phone will keep trying to send until it gets a moment of access. In high volume cell situations, text always trumps voice.

        I would say that part of any mo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by IvyKing ( 732111 )
        In the case of Qualcomm stadium or the Del Mar fairgrounds, we're talking about thousands of people. Your point about morale is absolutely right on.
    • "Isn't it great that technology like the internet has reached the point of acceptance that when peoples houses are burning down one of the main priorities is to ensure the shelter everyone has to hide in has wireless internet access and that people make sure they at least rescue their laptops and PDAs."

      They need information about their loved ones and the celluar network isn't handling the load. 'Everyone' isn't running into burning houses and rescuing their computers. They're being evacuated because their

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      Well considering that many people now keep their photos, home movies, and finical records in digital form taking your notebook is a lot like taking the photo album. My wife keeps two portable hard drives with all that stuff on it just in case.
      Having the Internet in this case available is very useful. It allows you to contact your family and friends to let them know you are okay and to get news. During the Hurricanes the Hams where passing a lot of traffic just to let people know that there loved ones where

    • Isn't it great that technology like the internet has reached the point of acceptance that when peoples houses are burning down one of the main priorities is to ensure the shelter everyone has to hide in has wireless internet access and that people make sure they at least rescue their laptops and PDAs.

      I'm sure it wasn't much more than 5 years ago that people would look at you funny if you turned up in such a place and said "Right, where's the net access?".

      Oh, I get it. You're one of those people who thinks

    • people make sure they at least rescue their laptops and PDAs.
      What do you own with a higher density of value than your laptop? It's as small as a book, costs thousands of dollars, holds all your most important information, and allows you to make arrangements and gather information... how stupid would you be to leave that behind?

  • Subsumed? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The local cell networks were subsumed by traffic early in the day

    I do not think it means what you think it means.

    subsume
    1. to consider or include (an idea, term, proposition, etc.) as part of a more comprehensive one.
    2. to bring (a case, instance, etc.) under a rule.
    3. to take up into a more inclusive classification.

    From Dictionary.com [reference.com]

  • Wireless Skype Phone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bryansix ( 761547 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @10:22AM (#21085707) Homepage
    In the article he talks about his wireless Skype Phone. These things are really nice to have around. I have one at home since I don't get any cell reception there. I forsee that in 5 years all cell phones will just have this built in though.

    • Why would they do that? Wouldn't it hurt the bottom line?

    • In the article he talks about his wireless Skype Phone. These things are really nice to have around. I have one at home since I don't get any cell reception there. I forsee that in 5 years all cell phones will just have this built in though.
      Tmobile is doing this right now but you need to have a branded hub for it to work. Why? It's your own bandwidth you're using, what's the problem? So once they stop being dicks about it, this will be great.

      • Tmobile is doing this right now but you need to have a branded hub for it to work.

        I did some research on this when they started advertising it to current customers, and if you dig deep enough, it turns out that you can use it with a third-party hub. The "learn more" [t-mobile.com] page has a link, Already Have a Router? [t-mobile.com], which says:

        If you already have a wireless router, it will likely work with T-Mobile HotSpot @Home. However, T-Mobile routers have been specifically designed and configured to provide the best possibl

        • They clearly want to sell you a router, though, because they've buried this information about as thoroughly as they can while still making it available through site navigation. I'm not sure, but you might even have to be a current customer and log in to find it.
          Wow, what incredible douches.
  • NSF funds a wireless research network with webcams on mountains and in valleys.

    http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/cameras/ [ucsd.edu]

    It's called the High performance wireless research network. Firefighters and police have been using it for communications in past fires and are undoubtedly using this time as well.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Bryansix ( 761547 )

      Firefighters and police have been using it for communications in past fires and are undoubtedly using this time as well.

      So you decided to post the link so it would be slashdotted and nobody could use it?

  • Big One (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cally ( 10873 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @10:27AM (#21085769) Homepage
    I've always been interested in the incipient Big One ever since the meme that it was due in 1976 and is now overdue went around. As the amount of critical infrastructure situated in and around SoCal has exploded along with the ubiquitous internet / cell connectivity, I can't help thinking that things are going to get pretty ugly when it comes, even if most of the actual buildings stand up and initial casualties are low, because of the density of comms and their upstream dependencies (power, transport links for service engineers, net ops and NOCs that maintain rather than going home to try digging out relatives, etc.

    A morbid line of thought, I know, but I do BCP / DR planning for my employer and we had a recent brush with an unplanned disaster (loss of a critical site for two weeks, due to the UK floods in July) which was a very... "interesting" experience. It was interesting how resilient we were despite having to wing it and improvise under tight time pressure; however, we were very very close to the point where it would all have fallen to bits. If a certain electricity substation flooded there'd be no power (== comms, food distribution,...) etc for the whole County. The CEP contingency plan for that is "evacuate Gloucestershire". The moral is, it's all good as long as you've got power, food & water, and your critical employees can and are able to work without putting themselves at risk.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      Here is the think about earth quakes in the US.
      If you survive the intial event, within 3 days of walking you will be out of the area. That's worse case.
      SO keep your supplies in a back back for each member, and take water jugs with handles.

      The moral of your story is actually:
      Don't depend on 1 substation.

  • Sounds like that shelter would be a great place to do some LAN gaming. Hell I would endure my house burning down for some great LAN gaming in the fire shelter! Fire oh noes! Team Fortress 2 all day and night for a month... YEAH!!

  • Ham Radio ?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Wapiti-eater ( 759089 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @10:55AM (#21086181)
    I'm curious to read the after action reports - no more so than the folks living this nightmare. I'm curious to see how the local ham community participated in all this.

    Using texting for 'Health and Welfare' messaging via WiFi at a shelter is great and the shelter folks are to be applauded for making that work so well! Such communications has traditionally been - at least augmented - by the amateur radio community. Was there still need/a place for this? Where they reachable by those dozen or so people who don't have texting cell phones or WiFi clients? Did the hams setup the WiFi access, coordinate it or what did they do?

    Who knows - maybe now the SSB and CW enthusiasts will finally have to learn how to deal with TCP/IP, CAT5, WiFi and texting - in spite of the Jay Leno message [youtube.com] race results.
    • Well, like you mentioned, ham radio is a great way to make long-range data connections. It's very easy to imagine ham's setting up an internet link to disrupted areas.
    • Doing H&W over WiFi is great if your shelter already has internet connectivity. You might get lucky enough to latch on to some willing neighbour's cable modem.

      Failing that, you've got some old man wearing his ARRL/ARES/RACES baseball cap carrying around a walkie-talkie.

      Out in the field, though, plenty of disaster & disaster recovery agencies are moving to satellite. Pull up with your mobile EOC with an auto-deploy antenna on the roof, push a button, 3 minutes later you've got anywhere between 64kb

  • Please use Text Messages (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DaveLatham ( 88263 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @10:59AM (#21086259)
    I think one important thing that was hinted at by the summary, and mentioned more explicitly in the article is this:

    Is everything working as it should? Any glitches?

    ...The one message local media could have been better communicating is for evacuees to use cell phones only when they are necessary and then to try and limit the use to texting.

    If you're in an emergency area, please minimize your voice use, and try to use text messages instead as they are much more lightweight on the cell networks. And pass the message on to those around you.
    • If you're in an emergency area, please minimize your voice use, and try to use text messages instead as they are much more lightweight on the cell networks. And pass the message on to those around you.

      Unfortunately, with the bass-ackwards cell phone rate plans available in this country, voice minutes are included, while text messages cost extra.

  • 300,000+ reverse 911 calls - plug for POTS (Score:4, Informative)

    by IvyKing ( 732111 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @11:38AM (#21086871)
    One of the great technology success stories of the ongoing fires is the number of people told to evacuate via reverse 911 calls. The bad news is that the calls only work for standard landline (and presumably cable_co phones where the number is tied to a specific address). In my case, I went to bed last night with a wired phone next to the bed - didn't want to depend on the power being on for the wireless phones.


    One sign of the success of the program is that only one fatality has been reported so far.


    Kudo's to 'Craig' for posting the information to Google Maps Sunday evening - that was the most informative source for info on the fire Sunday evening - pretty clear by 11PM that I wasn't going to work the next day (work was in a mandatory evac zone declared Monday morning).


    Some of the technology that hasn't worked has been the local '211' website (absolutely worthless) and the San Diego Union-Tribune website yesterday afternoon - they finally fixed that by dumping a lot of the flash and hosting the news updates on Blogspot. The local TV sites had too much flash to be useful.

    • I heard this on the news radio last night. Is this reverse 911 thing for the whole country or is it just local (e.g., San Diego)?

      Also, it scares me if someone finds a way to hack it and misuse it to scare people like this incident [slashdot.org].

    • One of the great technology success stories of the ongoing fires is the number of people told to evacuate via reverse 911 calls.

      In Southern California, 911 calls YOU! I wonder if this lifesaving technology was pioneered in Soviet Russia...

    • The city of San Diego is in the process of setting up a website for registering cell phones and e-maill for reverse 911 messages. The County of San Diego is considering a similar move.


      All the reports I've heard so far indicate that the Reverse 911 system worked very well during the fires - there were only a few minor glitches, which is to be expected.

  • I have a Shoutcast Feed up of the San Diego Fire Department radio traffic. It is at http://sdfire.blogsite.org:8000/ [blogsite.org]
  • Wow think of the amount of passwords and stuff someone naughty could capture.

    Sad WiFi doesn't have the equivalent of something like https/ssl yet, despite https being out before the abysmal crap called WEP.

    https = anonymous client (cert optional), encrypted connection to server (with cert that can potentially be checked). Easy for user to use.

    Currently I don't see an easy way to do the same thing with WiFi. I could set up something and ask users to enter the same username and password (not using WEP of cour
  • Studies have shown Uk's fire is as hot as Ug's fire.

    Back to you, Urg.

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