By Greg Berlocher

On Jan. 12, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, devastating the western end of Hispaniola and making life even more difficult for the country’s 9 million impoverished citizens. Minutes after the quake was reported, the satellite industry began responding, quickly becoming the foundation on which all recovery and relief efforts were built upon. With its undersea cable snapped and with a wireless infrastructure severely crippled, satellite technology was the only communication medium available to militaries, foreign governments and non-government agencies (NGO) that arrived in Haiti to provide assistance and relief, and important lessons have been learned that will help the satellite sector and emergency responders.

The scope of this disaster is hard to fathom. Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, and food, shelter and national infrastructure already were substandard. When the earthquake hit, it decimated not only homes, buildings and roads but also government buildings and the officials they housed. When the buildings tumbled down, it killed scores of government employees, effectively leaving the country without a functioning government. “The Haitian earthquake is quite different than other recent disasters,” says David Hartshorn, secretary general of the Global VSAT Forum. “In Asia, for example, the devastation was terrible after the tsunami, but Bangkok, and other capital cities, were not seriously affected. Likewise the cyclone in Myanmar in 2009 didn’t destroy the government. By contrast, the earthquake left Haiti with a negligible ability at the local level to coordinate a response. Even the United Nations mission in Haiti was destroyed. We are dealing with a very different set of challenges. In Haiti there was a core team of five government officials who coordinated frequencies for the nation. Four of the five were killed in the earthquake. This is a good example of the devastation. The entire government was affected the same way.”

Neil Butterfield, Latin America Special Events Coordinator for Intelsat, along with a team that included a video journalist from Reuters and a still photographer, flew into Port-au-Prince the morning after the earthquake. Butterfield started unloading 12 crates of gear from the plane, while the video producer went out on the streets looking for possible footage. He did not have to go far, returning after just 300 meters, declaring the carnage to be the worse he had ever seen, and four hours after arrival they broadcast the first news of the earthquake’s aftermath via Horizons 2.

The next day military cargo planes began arriving from the United States, bringing with them vital supplies. Additional journalists began arriving and were directed by the military to Intelsat’s uplink, which quickly became an impromptu media center. Some of the newly arriving journalists brought flyaways and the number of uplinks swelled to four.

Following the earthquake, MSS service providers began shifting resources to the Caribbean within minutes. In a great show of goodwill, satellite engineers from Skyterra and Inmarsat coordinated with each other to maximize the total amount of bandwidth available to the region through both company’s satellites. Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat, Inmarsat, Iridium and SkyTerra all provided significant amounts of bandwidth to militaries, government agencies and NGOs. Soon after the earthquake, wireless networks began popping up throughout Haiti. Many were connected to a new generation of MSS terminals. Iridium’s usage in Haiti increased 18,000 percent in just a week. The combined wireless/satellite duo proved beneficial to scores of governments, NGOs and other humanitarian organizations. As they came online, VSATs replaced many MSS terminals and provided even higher capacity satellite circuits. The message was clear: No longer did everyone need their own personal satellite dish. In addition, social networking sites proved immensely valuable, allowing multiple organizations to collaborate in a paperless system. “The Asian tsunami was the first disaster in which BGAN service had been used, but it was limited to ships at the time,” Jack Deasy, director, civil program at Inmarsat, says. “The earthquake in China marked the first time BGAN had been used on land in a disaster response. Over the last few years, the US media and NGOs have integrated BGAN into their organizations and are now trained to use the terminals. They can throw a BGAN terminal into a backpack and set up service very quickly.”

Haiti’s wireless infrastructure was crippled but not demolished. Shortly after the earthquake, Haitians began receiving text messages on their cell phones from friends and loved ones that were trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building. Sensing the significance of the international press, Haitian citizens began relaying the electronic pleas for help to the journalists. Text messages written in Creole, which is spoken by roughly 80 percent of the population, were relayed to West Africa via Skype, where they were translated into English. A group of volunteers at San Diego State University, which was working in conjunction with the U.S. Navy, used non-classified surveillance video from UAVs to seek out the locations which were described in the text messages and then send GPS coordinates to rescue teams who would then start their search. This was the first time civilians were allowed to access this military technology.

There are many lessons to be learned from the Haitian earthquake, and speed of operations remains key, says Hartshorn. “Having equipment in regions where there will likely be problems significantly reduces the time to set up communications,” he says. “Within hours of the earthquake, people in Haiti had contacted GVF and a technician was dispatched to help deploy the first VSATs for multiple NGOs. After day one, layer upon layer of communication systems began arriving in-country.”

Art Rumney, information technology director for Louisiana Social Services, who lived through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, confirms all of these points, stressing the availability of electric power, public assurance, pre-positioning of equipment and training. “We have built our new communication system on the pCom 300 VSAT trailer, built by Squire Tech Solutions. It has an integrated 10-kilowatt generator and has enough power to run our satellite and IT infrastructure for a week as well as emergency lighting and power-restoral abilities. After all, it all starts with power. … When a significant number of people must evacuate or are displaced by a natural or man made event, they can travel in any direction. The telephone lines are often jammed after an emergency, leaving family members to wonder about their loved one’s safety and whereabouts. Now, when someone checks into a Louisiana state shelter, their name is added to a database, which is searchable by employees of Louisiana Social Services. Families can now call the state agency and verify that a family member has been located and is being taken care of. … None of these systems are assured to work in a disaster unless you train with them. Rumney has embedded their disaster recovery satellite and IT networks into their infrastructure. Once a quarter the local offices of Louisiana Social Services must commission the pCom VSAT trailer and use the standby IT systems to register new applicants for food stamps. We must insure the continuation of government, even in the event of a major disaster. We must integrate these disaster recovery systems into our daily business, when we do so setting them up and using them becomes second nature.”