-----Original Message----- From: "Michael Mee" What a day .... Drew and I arrived in Gulfport MS at 8am - without our luggage. It joined us later in the day (minus a gel cell battery that TSA apparently needed). After a few wrong turns (you don't really appreciate hwy signs until they're missing), we ended up at the EOC (Emergency Operation Center) which is at the Bay St Louis airtpot out of town. Driving around was weird. Things looked pretty normal, except that every now and again there would be a house in some strange place, or a car upside down. The large roadside advertising signs were shredded or knocked over entirely. Lots of traffic. An amazing amount. A maintain that the most dangerous part of being here is driving. Lights aren't working (no power), large vehicles on the road, lots of vehicles off the road. Police and other emergency vehicles zooming around. The EOC is crowded. There's "International AID" (? I think), who the county called in to manage donations - including a huge pile of clothes that will get baled and sent to Africa, a pile of tents donated by China (but most have the wrong poles). The military have an awesome presence here. Hot water shower truck. Laundry truck (drop off, pick up 24 hrs later), mess tent. They provide a great service. Lots of fire crews from around the country (they search house wreckage for missing people). On the computer side, Drew and I were set to work building PCs to go into shelters. However, the main push has been to get voip phones into shelters. Driving around you can see why. Alongside the road are large phone cabinets with no doors - and no panels inside. The wind and water ripped off the doors and then took out all the wiring. There is sporadic cell phone service (lots of busy signals), but almost no wired services. The big push here has been to bring in a DS3 (45MBit) feed from Gulfport. They're trying to do thiw with a two hop link (via a electricity comms tower) using Trango 45Mbit 5.8GHz gear. After a side job of reconfiging a Linksys WRT54g to be a bridge to use to link two medical tents in a large parking area), I went out to the bottom of the 2nd tower and spent an hour installing POEs and zip tying everything so it would be reliable. The water tower is ringed with 900MHz radios with 60 degree sectors. These will be used to supply shelters with bandwidth for voice and internet. Which was the next lesson. It is HOT out here. You drink water constantly, sweat drips off you. I was inside a tin shed with my head in an equipment box. Phew. In the evening after dinner (steak!) Drew and I went back to add some patch cables to finish off the config. To finish off, we installed a bridge into one of the aid groups here at EOC - wow, they were so happy to be able to read their email. And then another person in the group got some fire fighters online - another very happy group. Its hard to underestimate how much internet dialtone has become part of doing a modern job. cheers, michael _______________________________________________ SoCalFreeNet.org General Discussion List To unsubscribe, please visit: http://socalfreenet.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_socalfreenet.org
