[LINK] comms fails during Black Saturday

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Roger Clarke wrote:
> At 14:09 +1100 27/3/09, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>> Mobile networks 'failed on Black Saturday'
>> http://www.theage.com.au/national/mobile-networks-failed-on-black-saturday-20090327-9djj.html 
>>
> ...
>> Most other properties on Doctors Creek Road, where he lives, were destroyed.
>> Four people perished in the fires around Wandong and 147 houses were
>> lost. The royal commission had initially overlooked it on its list of
>> community consultations but added it to the 12 other fire-affected
>> communities after protests.
> 
> Mistakes like that give you some idea of the scale of the event.
> 
> ('Oops, missed that on the list, because it was small beer in the 
> scheme of things.  Sorry, we'll add you!').
> 
> 
> On the subject of the lack of mobile coverage, ...
> 
> I was at the Retirement Village that my father's in.  It's 2km 
> outside Camden, which these days is the first town outside the Sydney 
> conurbation in the SW direction, 70km by road, 50km as the crow 
> flies.  The population's about 50,000, in an LGA that's maybe 8km N-S 
> and 11km E-W.
<snip>
> The new block, to the Ops Manager's considerable disappointment, 
> doesn't have mobile-phone coverage, or at least not the carrier he 
> uses.  He looked surprised when he couldn't get a signal, so I can 
> only assume that he uses it on the rest of the property.
> 
> 

It would be line of sight to the hume highway rather than Camden that would be a
better indicator of mobile phone coverage.

One of the snippets I picked up in the coverage of the Victorian Bush Fires was
that there was an empty Retirement village - Does anyone know whether the
residents were evacuated or it wasn't in use?

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202