By Chris Peikert
Every two years, the Matagorda County Emergency Operations Center performs FEMA-graded drills with the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company. Several years ago, a couple of ham radio operators joined our EOC. Each time we had a drill, people would scratch their heads and wonder “why in the world are they here?”.
Then Hurricane Beryl hit Matagorda County around 4 a.m. on the morning of July 8th, 2024. Power was knocked out, and when I woke up, I noticed there was no cellular service. By the time I got dressed and made it to the end of my road I was met by the Sheriff’s Office. The LT rolled down the window and said “Get to the office. Everything is out.”
When I walked in, the EOC was in chaos. All forms of communication were dead: cell phones, land lines, internet, even our radio system. While someone else went to check the tower to get the radio system back up, I drove north toward Wharton County hoping for a cell signal. I finally found one bar on the north edge of Bay City and was able to text my Firstnet Rep and requested a cellular on wheels (COW) to get delivered ASAP.
I drove back to the EOC and informed them that there was enough signal on the edge of town that they could text, but calls did not work. I think the entire EOC staff jumped up and left.
Sometime later that morning, we did get the radio tower working, albeit in a limited capacity, for first responders to communicate. However, the EOC and Commissioners didn’t have radios, and were still blind to what was going on throughout the county.
About that time, our ham operators arrived and asked “how can we help?!” Within minutes, they were set up and operating. Once they were on the air, they contacted other ham operators around the county, which allowed us to stage an operator at a key location so that the EOC could communicate with our distribution center in Sargent.
Eventually, AT&T showed up with a Firstnet COW for the EOC, but few people used Firstnet. Fortunately, the COW they set up at the hospital worked with non-FirstNet devices, and we were able to get enough of a signal to make some phone calls.
Now for the “funny, but not funny” part regarding AT&T: it turns out there is only one fiber line feeding Matagorda County, and it services everything. We also learned that AT&T doesn’t always fill the tanks of their generators at the tower sites. So even when their towers did get restored, they died within hours because the generators ran out of gas. And when the fiber line was finally fixed late that afternoon, it ended up going down again the next day without warning, and our communications problems began all over again.
The last thing we learned is that when the Emergency Operations Center requests an asset through the State of Texas Assistance Request (STAR), it becomes the property of Matagorda County until the County Judge releases that asset. As it turns out, AT&T does not have a contract with the Texas Department of Emergency Management (TDEM). So even though Firstnet provided us COWs, as soon as they felt we didn’t need them anymore, they would take them away. It didn’t matter if we still had no cell service. This became a constant battle between our EOC, TDEM, and AT&T.
It was three days before we were finally able to get 90% of our communications methods back up and running, but we still had one dead cell site, near where the storm made landfall. The event was crazy enough that the FCC spokeswoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, came onsite to visit.
Our after-action report detailed recommended the following changes (some of which are still in-progress):