When the Cell Towers Went Down during Hurricane Isaias, So Did the Warnings

Hurricane Isaias knocked out power to more than 900,000 customers across Florida, Alabama, and Georgia this past weekend, and where the power went, the cell towers went with it.

By Saturday afternoon, the FCC counted more than 18 percent of Florida's cell sites offline, and 17 percent in Alabama. Every dead cell site is a pocket of people who cannot receive a texted warning, cannot get a wireless alert, cannot call for help. More than 45,700 cable and phone subscribers were out of luck, too.

Here's more proof, from T-Mobile itself: On Friday alone, more than 16,000 people fell back on satellite texting because regular cell service was unavailable — over 38,000 messages in all, some to family, some to 911.

When Texting Isn’t a Warning

Satellite texting is a fine lifeline for one person. It is not a warning system. It's slow, it's one-to-one, it works only with the right phone, the right carrier, and a clear view of the sky — and somebody already in trouble has to think to use it. You cannot warn a county with it.

And this has happened before. In August 2020, an earlier Isaias — only a tropical storm — knocked out power to nearly a quarter of Connecticut's population, and cell and internet service were interrupted along with it. The FCC ended up publishing a Connecticut-specific report on the communications breakdown. Six years later, different coast, same failure.

And radio? The FCC's count for this storm: Not one AM, FM or TV station lost its ability to transmit. Not one. One transmitter reaches everyone in the danger zone at the same instant, and the receivers are already in nearly every car and kitchen, running on batteries.

Isaias is only the latest reminder; warnings must ride on a channel that survives the disaster. When AM radio is given the prominent role in crisis communications plans that it has earned, communities — and the people in them — are safer.

AM Radio Stayed On

And if you need more convincing, see my Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies (CHORE) site for dozens of examples of people’s lives being threatened or taken because digital warnings didn’t reach them. 

UPDATE, later on 10/12/26: The FCC has revised its preliminary broadcast count; one TV station and four FM stations were briefly knocked off the air, and cable and landline outages climbed to nearly 194,000 customers. No AM station lost its ability to transmit.