Hurricane Helene’s Catastrophic Flooding Tests IT Readiness

The aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s 500-mile swath of destruction came into full view as reports and pictures posted after the Sept. 26 storm depicted apocalyptic scenes of normally quiet and tranquil areas -- such as mountain tourist destination Asheville, North Carolina.

For an IT service provider, just finding a connection is a nightmare, let alone assisting clients impacted by the storm. Zack Calloway, owner of Asheville-based managed service provider Blue Ridge Technology, chatted with InformationWeek through LinkedIn messaging using his cell phone.

“We began working with our clients early Monday morning, before 8 a.m.,” he says. “Our initial conversations were with key stakeholders to assess their most pressing concerns. It quickly became clear that each client was facing different challenges … a few clients lost everything due to 6-10 feet of water in their offices. In those cases, we immediately started working on securing new, used, or borrowed equipment to get them operational again.”

Calloway said just finding a reliable internet connection is going to be an issue for some time. “Many of our clients have been told that their fiber and co-ax connections may not be restored for four weeks or more. Unfortunately, cellular service, which many clients use as a backup, is nearly unusable at the moment.”

Related:Time for a Disaster Recovery Health Check

Asheville is known for its vibrant downtown, the historic Biltmore Estate and its surrounding mountain communities. While coastal parts of North Carolina have been pummeled by past hurricanes, landlocked Asheville was isolated and seen as a safe haven from extreme weather events -- that all changed with Helene, which dumped a reported 40 trillion tons of water on the southern states.

“By far, the biggest takeaway for us is that relying on the same contingency plan across the board can lead to its failure,” Calloway says. “Nearly all of our clients had planned to use 5G/4G cellular backups for internet connectivity. However, when everyone turns to the same solution, the network becomes overwhelmed, rendering the backup almost unusable. The situation was made worse by the fact that we also lost several cell towers in the region. Even without that, the sheer volume of traffic on the network would have caused it to be unreliable.”

A Change in the Weather

Some scientists say climate change made a direct impact on the severity of flooding during Helene. In a provisional rapid attribution statement Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists Mark Risser, Joshua North, and Michael Wehner said climate change made rainfall during Helene 20 times more likely in some areas. They said climate change and warmer air may have caused as much as 50% more rainfall in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas.

Jessica Hitt, associate director of adaptation and resilience at ClimateWorks Foundation, says Helene’s destruction should spur change. “Unprecedented extreme weather events such as Hurricane Helene, already one of the costliest storms in US history, sparks the need for unprecedented climate action,” Hitt tells InformationWeek in an email interview. “Creating adaptation plans that leverage information and technology solutions will enable better decision-making and allow businesses to anticipate climate impacts…”

With extreme weather possibly impacting areas that were previously thought to be low-risk, experts say businesses need to re-think their business recovery plans.

Jamie Grant, former CIO of the state of Florida, tells InformationWeek that government leaders and IT leaders need to work more closely in the days leading up to potential disasters. “We absolutely need to be having our technology leaders at the table in the governor’s office, the mayor’s office … long before these storms hit.”

And with risks changing -- whether it’s from unprecedented weather events, or unprecedented cyberattacks -- leaders are faced with creating contingency plans for scenarios they’ve never experienced more often.

“Businesses and governments, along with the private and public sector, should be thinking about business continuity and resiliency in different terms,” Grant says in a phone interview. “We could just as easily talk about the increase in ransomware attacks on public sector entities -- the same way we talk about climate.”

Despite differences in opinion about climate change in political circles, Grant (who was also a Republican Florida state senator) says a unified approach is possible. “There’s always going to be people that want to sit down and solve problems on both sides ... we should be proactively thinking thorough how we prepare so that we don’t have our entire operation crippled.”

Lessons From a Previous Hurricane

Grant has intimate knowledge of running IT systems during a natural disaster. His office headed up the state’s IT efforts during Hurricane Ian in 2022. As first responders’ communications systems failed, Grant’s office stepped in.

“The No. 1 thing we did was just establishing connectivity,” Grant says, noting that the state utilized Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its Starlink system, which uses low-orbit satellites to provide high-speed internet.

“I grew up in Florida and have gone though a lot of hurricanes. At first, you thought about how long we are without water. Then, it’s how long are we without water and power. Now, it’s how long are we without water, power, and internet. Establishing connectivity is a big deal.”

The connectivity allowed Grant’s office to establish a website to help reconnect families with missing loved ones. “We used the platform and ingested all of the data from the initiatives -- made a place where people could report in safe. Once you get the visibility and the assessment, then you can support boots on the ground … to make their efforts more meaningful.”

Ongoing Efforts

In North Carolina, the Biden Administration on Thursday announced it would set up dozens of Starlink devices and SpaceX said approximately 500 Starlink kits are being deployed by private individuals and organizations to help with recovery efforts.

The Biden administration also said they would send 1,000 Army troops to help with the disaster response to Hurricane Helene. More than 6,000 National Guard members are assisting across 12 states.

FEMA officials said more than 8.5 million meals, 7 million liters of water, 150 generators, and more than 220,000 tarps have been distributed.

The hurricane so far has killed at least 162 people in the Southeast, including 57 in North Carolina’s Buncombe County, home to Asheville.

Hundreds more are still missing.