For call centers that are the hubs of communication for businesses, keeping those lines open during emergencies and natural disasters can be vital. These providers know that clients rely on them year-round, and that includes all kinds of unforeseen circumstances.
This year, Washington state saw a large number of wildfires, primarily occurring on the eastern side of the Cascade Range in the Chelan and Okanogan counties. The fires burned private land, state land, and land within the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests. The 2014 wildfire season has been six times worse than normal.
U.S. Electrodynamics, Inc. (USEI) is a communications company founded in 1985 with its headquarters in Brewster, Wash. USEI provides government and corporate satellite teleport services including telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C), broadcast, multicasting, and Internet services delivery. USEI hosts and distributes satellite internet services and provides network solutions for a wide range of private, commercial and government users.
USEI operates a 100-acre, 54-antennae satellite Ground Station in the town of Brewster, providing critical communications to U.S. Government agencies in the continental U.S., as well as in the Pacific and Atlantic regions. These services are supported by high-tech infrastructure, transmitting mission-critical U.S. Defense Department communications, which accounts for over half the services at the USEI Brewster Ground Station.
It is not hard to believe the type of devastation that the wildfires caused. When you consider that phone, electrical and pretty much all wires are located on wooden poles high above the ground, it is easy to realize that they will all be caught up in the blaze. According to Jim Veeder, who is CEO at USEI, with more than 20 miles of critical telecommunications fiber burned to the ground, the Brewster Ground Station was faced with a major challenge.
This week, Frontier Communications was praised and honored by USEI for meeting that challenge head on. Frontier maintained open communications while the season’s worse wildfires were raging. Frontier Communications Corporation is a U.S. based telephone company, mainly serving rural areas and smaller communities. The emergency response efforts during the series of wildfires that raged across Central Washington were crucial to USEI’s promise that “Brewster never goes down.”
Veeder had the following to say about Frontier’s efforts, “We were in crisis recovery mode; we lost nearly all communications due to the raging 300,000-acre wildfire. For our U.S. Government customers, the situation was precarious at best. Thanks to Frontier, the situation dramatically improved as Frontier fully restored their services to USEI in less than 48 hours. Frontier did not stop restoration efforts once their fiber infrastructure was operational. They continued to work hand in hand with USEI, Okanogan County PUD and Douglas County PUD to develop a restoration solution for the destroyed Okanogan County PUD fiber serving our facility and others. The team effort on this was impressive and the outcome was total restoration of infrastructure strength in approximately four days, which was a great improvement over the initial assessment provided by Okanogan County PUD. As terrible of an experience as it was, it was wonderful to feel the power and dedication of our teams working together relentlessly and with deep passion.”
In addition to all the work accomplished in an incredibly short amount of time to get USEI back up and running, Frontier did the same for several 911 exchanges in Okanogan County, Ephrata and Ferry County. If that was enough, the company also provided emergency temporary services to the crews of firefighters battling the wildfires, including service to a temporary heliport at the Pangborn Airport in Wenatchee.
Considering the Herculean task that Frontier was able to achieve in just 48 hours, they definitely deserve all the praise that is due. We are proud to mention that Frontier will be one of our keynote speakers at TMC’s (News - Alert) ITEXPO taking place in Miami, Jan. 27-30, 2015.
Edited by Alisen Downey