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Massive phone service loss offers a good drill scenario

Tip Of The Week, September 26, 2007

A real-life incident in Texas may provide some fodder to escalate your emergency management exercise scenarios.

Last week, a construction worker in Hays County, TX, was attacked by bees, which inadvertently caused the victim to hit a lever on a vehicle that lowered an auger into the ground. The auger sliced into a phone company line, knocking out land-based and cell phone service for 130,000 customers for about seven hours, reported the Austin American-Statesman.

Central Texas Medical Center in San Marcos lost its long-distance phone service, making it hard to contact some employees, the hospital's president told the American-Statesman. Hospital clinicians also had to revert to paper recordkeeping after the electronic medical records system went down.

Hospital officials concluded that the phone outage was a good chance to practice emergency response plans, but had it been a long-term loss of service, things would have gotten more challenging to handle.

Communication loss is an interesting idea to add to your own drills, particularly as a new twist to scenario that is already underway.

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