by Donna Howell: Katrina's Proving To Be A Tough Test For Technology
Mon Aug 29, 7:00 PM ET

Water, wind and wires make a bad mix.

Hurricane Katrina tangled with technology as it blew into Louisiana Monday. The storm spurred power, phone and Internet outages that could linger. On the plus side, technology, from radar to cell phones, provided a lifeline to people trying to escape the storm.

"The value of technology was in the warning time and the specificity. But when the hurricane hit, everything broke down," said George Friedman, chairman of Stratfor, which provides intelligence and analysis to corporate and government clients. "At this point (3:30 p.m. EDT), I would say we're pre-industrial. Cars aren't moving in and out. Boats can't go. You can sometimes get a cell phone connection -- usually not."

The next steps for checking on infrastructure -- assessing oil platform and ground damage, and deaths -- will be by aircraft and on foot, Friedman says. He points out that satellites, so useful for modern communications, can't see through the cloud cover.

As Katrina approached, evacuees relied on technology to coordinate travel. Some turned Web sites into emergency message boards. Blogger Mark Kraft, in Santa Clara, Calif., kept in touch with many members of the LiveJournal online community that stayed in New Orleans.

"One (member) I was trying to persuade to evacuate basically couldn't," he said. That person "actually got invited by another LiveJournaler to go to a secure apartment on the fourth floor of a building. They rode out the storm there."

LiveJournal has thousands of members from the New Orleans area, Kraft says. One posted updates from a data center in a tall building in town. Evacuees on the move also scrambled to communicate.

"A lot have been doing what's called a phone post," Kraft said. "You call a phone number, and it sort of acts like a voice-mail box. It records the conversation and posts it straight to your journal."

Communications infrastructure providers stood by Monday to start recovery efforts as soon as it became feasible. Cingular Wireless, for instance, had more than 500 emergency generators waiting to be dispatched, mostly at "rapid response" staging areas in Mobile, Ala., and Lafayette, La.

"New Orleans and Baton Rouge in Louisiana; Mobile, Ala.; and Biloxi, Miss. -- those seem to be the worst-hit areas," said Cingular spokesman Mark Siegel. "Once conditions are safe, we'll begin to dispatch recovery teams."

The SANS Institute, an Internet security training outfit, reported no major Internet disruption from the storm as of mid-Monday.

"So far, all the outages we see are local for that area," said Chief Research Officer Johannes Ullrich for SANS, which stands for systems administration, audit, network, security. "The only thing regional is that Internet2 (a next-generation network for universities) lost a link from Atlanta to Houston. And universities can route around it."

The problem was on a 10-gigabit link and related to an outage at a Qwest Communications (NYSE:Q - News) facility in New Orleans, said Doug Pearson, senior manager of a network operations center at Indiana University.

SunGard Availability Services, a provider of technology and office space in emergencies, said nine clients officially declared storm-related disasters and started up remote business continuity operations; 104 clients went on alert.

"Financial institutions are declaring, as are companies in the medical industry," said Bob DiLossi, manager of the company's crisis management center in Philadelphia. "State agencies have not declared, but are on alert."

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