WENTWORTH CREEK, N.S. — People are still discussing post-tropical storm Dorian a month after it swirled through Nova Scotia, knocking out power and leaving residents, for a time, without cellular service.
Various groups and organizations have been holding debriefings, looking for ways to do better for future storm systems and to provide praise for what worked.
The Municipality of West Hants was one such organization.
Councillors are looking to write a letter to the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) outlining their concerns over the interrupted cellular service.
“It was a real problem. I think that Bell, to Eastlink, to Telus, they make a lot of money and I think they could do a better job,” said Martin Laycock, the municipality’s chief administrative officer while providing an overview of the efforts West Hants staff undertook before, during and after the storm.
Coun. Kathy Monroe agreed that the CRTC should be contacted.
“Somebody needs to put their thumb on these people and tell them if they're going to make all that money off putting cell towers (up) and providing service, they should have emergency countermeasures,” she said, noting most people don’t use landlines anymore.
Warden Abraham Zebian made a motion to recommend to the Oct. 9 council meeting that they write a letter to the CRTC expressing the municipality’s concern over the lack of reliable cell communication service that was experienced during the first 24 hours of Dorian. He said they need to “stress the importance that these companies strengthen their service to the people.”
The Sept. 24 motion was unanimously supported.
TMR SYSTEM WORKED WELL
Paul Maynard, a deputy fire chief with the Hantsport Fire Department and the vice-president of the Kings County Firefighters’ Association, said the provincial trunked mobile radio (TMR) system worked without a hitch in the area, allowing seamless communication between firefighters and other emergency first responders.
Maynard said they often rely on TMR for emergency calls and that the system was built on a sturdy foundation.
“The towers are built to a certain spec; all the TMR towers have battery backup, most of them have fixed mount generators that are used during storms, so they're fairly self-contained and they can certainly last quite a while during a storm,” said Maynard in a phone interview.
Brooklyn Fire uses the Nova Scotia Integrated Mobile Radio System and Maynard said that system also stayed up throughout the weather event.
“In terms of emergency communications during Dorian, and again, I can only speak for Kings and West Hants, we're not aware of any issues at all that occurred. All of our systems stayed up and functioned as normal. It was certainly a busy time for every fire department in those areas,” he said.
Maynard noted that many of their systems do rely on the internet and cell reception and he would be in favour of the giant telecom companies strengthening their infrastructure.
“I think all emergency services, and the public and government services, everything really becomes quite crippled once your LTE, your cellular networks, go down,” said Maynard, noting it takes a serious outage for people to realize how dependent they've become on technology.
For example, firefighters usually receive text messages to accompany a page for service. The message provides the address and a brief description of what they’re being called to attend. But when cellular systems are down, so are those text messages.
“Fortunately, we still get the voice page and everything that we always normally have but a lot of people become dependent on getting that text message that comes through for a call,” said Maynard.
Another issue with a lack of cellular service is GPS inside fire trucks.
“We've become very data dependent on those cellular networks so certainly anything the big companies can do... to harden those networks would be certainly a help to not only emergency services but government services and everybody in general.”
