Hurricane Maria 'Catastrophic,' Pai Says
Hurricane Maria had “a catastrophic impact on Puerto Rico’s communications networks,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in a statement Thursday. The agency is “proactively reaching out to communications providers in Puerto Rico to gather additional information about the situation on…
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the ground and find out if there is anything that the Commission can do to assist with restoration efforts,” Pai said. The chairman tweeted: “Devastating news coming out of #PuertoRico after #HurricaneMaria; power knocked out, infrastructure destroyed.” Pai said in the release 95 percent of Puerto Rico’s cellsites are down. “Unfortunately, getting Puerto Rico’s communications networks up and running will be a challenging process, particularly given the power outages throughout the island,” Pai said. “The FCC stands ready to do whatever we can to help with this task.” The agency created a landing page for information about the storm. As of 11 a.m. EDT Thursday, both PSAPs in Puerto Rico are functioning normally, but in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) one 911 call center each in St. Croix and St. Thomas is having problems caused by the storm, said a report from the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System. All counties in Puerto Rico have more than 75 percent of their cellsites out of service, and 48 out of the country’s 78 counties have all of their cellsites down, the DIRS report said. In the USVI, 77 percent of cellsites are down, 60 percent or more in each county. “Since there are widespread power outages in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the FCC has received reports that large percentages of consumers are without either cable services or wireline service,” the report said. Only one TV station has reported being out of service in the affected area, but no other broadcasters in the area have reported in to DIRS, the FCC said.