Cellphone disruption sends community into panic
A local man drove by the wildfire in the Alpine area which AT&T officials said caused wireless disruption countywide on Friday.
Brawley resident Eric Reyes said, “There were huge pockets of black smoke where you could not see the homes and the buildings. And then you see the huge marks of fire that were just tremendously burning in a rage as you would say almost. And people parked along the driveways. And then there were all the emergency medical.”
He went into panic mode.
“I was worried for my mother who is in a nursing home and I was trying to communicate if everything was fine there. And also lost contact with different people. You feel very powerless. You feel kind of useless. You feel the urge to be able to do more and understand why we can’t be able to communicate in those crucial moments,” Reyes said.
Resident Maria Dominguez said she couldn’t coordinate work activities.
“I was worried because, you know, people make plans and it was from one day to the next. And, oh, my god, how am I going to do it to find these people. I don’t have them on my messenger, on my media, so, it was a little nervous,” Dominguez said.
Brawley City Council Member Sam Couchman said he lost communications as well.
“My internet did go down for most of the day. I think they had some problems with a lot of the internet coverage, and so it went down. I think it also went down for a lot of people,” Couchman said.
He said people need to be ready if this or much worse happens in the future.
“I think we need to be prepared to be able to communicate in old fashion ways, just as we do now. CB radios used to be very popular And you need to be prepared to take care of yourself for a couple of days and not depend on all this technology, air-conditioning, supermarkets having food, all of those type of things,” Couchman said.
“We do need to make a plan to make sure that they know what to do, that way we don’t worry as a family,” Dominguez said.
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