Coverage Stable in TX as Harvey Creeps Toward LA

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Tropical Storm Harvey continued to deluge southeastern Texas with rain and surging floodwater Tuesday, as it slowly crept toward Louisiana. A major dam outside Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, overflowed, resulting in more flooding.

About 95 percent of the cell tower sites in the 55 total counties of Texas and Louisiana are working, according to the latest figures from the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS). The carriers provide updated information to DIRS daily.

At mid-morning on Tuesday, 4.7 percent of the cell sites were down in the affected area, the same as Monday. The counties with more than 50 percent of cell sites out are Aransas and Refugio in Texas. Louisiana is beginning to have cell site outages. Calcasieu, St. John the Baptist, and Terrebonne are the only parishes reporting site outages, each with one site out.

In 55 Texas and Louisiana counties that are part of the disaster area, 365 out of 7,805 cell tower sites were down as of mid-morning Tuesday, according to the latest figures from the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS). That compares to 320 out of 7,804 sites down on Monday.

The cell site outages were 84.2 percent in Aransas County (16 out of 19 sites down) and 73.1 percent in Refugio (19 out of 26). Calhoun County’s situation improved to 13 out of 26 sites out, dropping below 50 percent — to 46.4 percent. San Patricio County improved as well, to 12 out of 58 sites out, or 20.7 percent. 

A Sprint spokeswoman told Inside Towers as of Tuesday morning, “Our latest reports show the network is still holding up well at about 97 percent availability across the impacted areas.”  

Overall, AT&T’s networks in South Texas “continue to perform well,” according to a spokesman contacted by Inside Towers on Tuesday. “AT&T technicians are working to restore service to affected areas as quickly and safely as conditions allow.”

Corpus Christie continues to improve while Houston remains the same, T-Mobile told Inside Towers. The company said there’s “minimal impact” to its wireless network in the Houston area, “despite the flooding and power outages.”

There were 15 emergency call centers affected by the storm, compared to 16 on Monday. None are down without their calls being re-routed, according to the agency. Ten call centers have regained total service and nine added to the list. Seven radio stations remained off the air, compared to nine previously. For the first time, the FCC reported that one television station, KUQI in Corpus Christi, is off the air.

August 30, 2017                 

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