Prep'ing for Hurricane Season

Satellite Internet, Solar powered devices and more...

As we close in on June 1st and the official start of hurricane season here in south Mississippi, we begin to review again our disaster recovery plans. I was with a customer recently that was installing a satellite communications system from Skycasters, replacing an older model dish from another provider. I soon discovered that Skycasters offered broadband speed wireless with VPN and VoIP compatible service, in fact with speeds from 1.5Mbps to 4Mbps download speeds, and 384kbps to 1.5Mbps upload speeds. Now this is not a high availability solution for a primary site with multi-megabit trunks, but to be able to communicate in times of disaster satellite is second to none. As we experienced in the aftermath of Katrina, cellular networks were down for weeks, land lines for months in some cases, internet connectivity non-existent and roadways impassible. Skycasters is compatible with Vonage, Packet8 and Shoretel Voice over IP services, so you could set up an account with a VoIP carrier to be able to communicate to the outside world in the first few hours or days after a disaster. Also, since it's VPN compatible as well there is the opportunity to establish secure remote access links to a hosted site. Now all of this assumes you've already taken care of your power needs with a reliable generator solution and have enough fuel to get you through.

This is also a good solution for those remote locations where you can only get a dial-up connection from the local rural phone carrier and DSL, T1 or cable is not available. I'm sure you can think of other uses for this as well, but if you were looking for options to maintain data connectivity to the outside world during the upcoming hurricane season, check into Skycasters.

Also, don't forget about handheld communication options. Head over to GlobalCom and check out the solutions available from Iridium, Globalstar, Thuraya, and Inmarsat. There are rental options for the handheld phones and purchase plans with pre-paid minute plans available with discounts or pay-as-you-go plans. A recent addition to Globalcom's lineup is a portable solar charger for their handheld satellite phone solutions. It has a cigarette lighter female adapter end on the output line that could potentially be used to charge other devices - I have a call into them to look into this and will let you know more later.

While I'm on this rant, don't forget about some of the other options out there that you need to consider. Amazon has a nice selection of solar ovens, and Sundance Solar has everything from cellphone/iPOD solar rechargers to solar flashlights, radios and lanterns and reasonably priced DC inverter kits and battery arrays to power some higher wattage basic items. You can also head over to ETA Engineering and check out DC power refrigerators, and even SolarChill evaporative coolers (think window A/C unit). I'm particularly keen on their solar water/pool pump solutions as well.

One last thought, it was easier to find propane after Katrina than gasoline or diesel, and there are propane and natural gas powered generators available as well as conversion kits for existing gasoline generators at USCarb.

I know I've probably left a few things out (like MREs), so send me your lists of all the things you've done to prepare for the upcoming hurricane season and I'll post a compiled planning list link.