Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: OLE@csli.stanford.edu (Ole J. Jacobsen) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: What Works in a Disaster Message-ID: Date: 19 Oct 89 22:39:33 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Lines: 17 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 462, message 3 of 9 After the big quake here Tuesday night, it was understandably difficult to make both local and long-distance calls. Dialtone was not the ever- present commodity that we're used to. The radio adviced people to use the phone as little as possible. Pac Bell reported handling one million calls per minute in the hours following the disaster I helped a friend contact her worried parents in New York, and finally succeeded after some 10XXX hacking, the carrier which worked was 311 which I believe is AllNet. In answer to someone's question to this list: The reason big carriers like AT&T are somtimes unable to provide service in situations like this is quite simple: Overload. The "little" guys are nice to use as backups (like my 10311 hack) in such situations, how many people have AllNet as their default carrier anyway? Ole