10 Tech Companies Navigating Hurricanes Helene, Milton: ‘We’re All In This Together’
Here’s how some solution providers, vendors and distributors have been helping customers, employees and individuals living in the areas impacted by Hurricane Helene and how they’re preparing for the impact of Hurricane Milton.
From solution providers getting customers and their own businesses back online after Hurricane Helene to telecommunications companies readying cell sites for when Hurricane Milton makes landfall this week, the one-two punch of powerful storms in the Southeast has been a time of devastation as well as a time for the channel to rise to the occasion.
CRN has put together a sample of how solution providers, vendors and distributors in the affected areas of Hurricane Helene—some of them now bracing for Hurricane Milton—have been navigating the extreme weather and its aftermath.
Hurricane Milton is expected to cause upward of 15 feet of storm surge and 16 inches of rainfall in parts of western Florida when it reaches land Wednesday or Thursday, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Its projected path doesn’t show Milton striking other states in the region.
Hurricanes Helene, Milton Effects
Helene was the second-deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland in 50 years, with a death toll of more than 230 people, according to CNN.
Data analytics firm CoreLogic estimates about $30.5 billion to $47.5 billion in total wind and flood insured and uninsured losses.
Here’s more of how solution providers, vendors and distributors are navigating Helene’s aftermath while preparing for Milton.
ETS Networks
Arden, N.C.
Ed Tatsch, owner and president of family-run MSP ETS Networks, could call out through Wi-Fi on his office’s wired internet Monday while his house remained without power and water soaked his basement.
Tatsch was one of about 141,000 without power in the North Carolina mountains on Saturday, according to Duke Energy.
Many of ETS’ customers are local businesses, Tatsch said. One ETS customer lost everything, and the rest are without services. Many people fled to Charlotte and Raleigh temporarily. Two main routes into his area “have been cut off completely … entirely washed out,” he said.
“Infrastructure is our biggest problem here right now, for customers, for people personally,” he said. “Mobile communications [are bad]. It’s not their fault. I get that. They don’t expect to have to have generators for every last tower they have for 100 miles.”
Signs of improvement proved fleeting. One customer finally got back online through LTE backup only for it to fail on Monday and the customer locked out of a local server requiring internet-based multi-factor authentication, Tatsch said.
“We’ve got to rebuild,” he said. “People have to rebuild the water infrastructure. We’ve got to rebuild electrical infrastructure because there were 200 substations destroyed or partially rendered useless.”
For people looking to donate, Tatsch recommended The Storehouse, a ministry providing food and necessities to Henderson County, N.C.
Cyber Solutions
Anderson, S.C.
In South Carolina, to get customers internet access, employees of MSP Cyber Solutions would connect cellular hotspots to firewalls in customers’ buildings and even turned to no-contract wireless devices at Walmart for aid.
Eric Gurley, founder and CEO of Cyber Solutions, told CRN in an interview that for his customers that have power, a huge portion don’t have any internet access.
Because of the popularity of cloud-based services, Cyber Solutions customers without power at their offices could set up remote working if need be. Most of its customers have a large portion of their data in the cloud, especially following the global pandemic.
Cyber Solutions, which has about 40 employees, also acted quickly to adjust security settings to accommodate location changes and allow system access by users, he said.
The purchase of the no-contract Walmart devices was so successful, Gurley said, that the MSP is “going to keep those in stock because, just from a value perspective … we can deploy these things in a matter of minutes.”
“We’re going to have those on hand in the future for smaller-scale things,” he said. “It’s a really neat way to be able to put a Band-Aid on the internet for a period of time.”
Gurley said he plans to encourage customers to invest more in cellular backups. Cellular modems were “a lifesaver” for Cyber Solutions customers, especially for municipalities and towns that needed to take emergency phone calls as well as for medical facilities.
“Even the people that were running off generator power, they still had no internet,” he said. “You can tether to your cellphone or whatever, but you can’t easily feed an entire network with your cellphone. … The firewall just fails right over to the cellular device and, for the most part, you don’t even know that it happened.”
In a display of camaraderie at Cyber Solutions, as employees’ power returned, they would invite co-workers to their homes to get connected. “You have got these people sitting around kitchen tables,” Gurley said. “Our customers were very impressed. We were able to really adapt quickly. And as our customers needed us, we were available.”
Ballast Services
Oldsmar, Fla.
Keith Archibald, CEO of Ballast Services, told CRN in an interview that the day after Helene, the city smelled like saltwater brought in by the hurricane.
The storm had disparate effects on the area, Archibald noted, with a devastated neighborhood a block from an untouched one. Post-Helene debris remains piled up in the worst-hit areas of Tampa Bay, with emergency services concerned about it proving a hazard for any Milton rescues.
Archibald said he’s seen pictures showing that roads to Georgia are packed with people evacuating.
But despite the property damage to homes, from a business continuity perspective, things went well for Ballast customers, about 60 percent of whom are in Florida and most of them working in the midmarket, Archibald said.
“Most customers have shifted their workloads to the cloud,” he said. “Most companies now have their data centers running in a colo [colocation data center] or in the cloud, and those are pretty bulletproof.”
For customers hit by flooded homes, Ballast stepped up to handle technology needs so that they could focus on personal recovery and damage, Archibald said.
“That’s been a blessing that we’ve been able to help people with” that, he said. “I’m happy to do that.”
TD Synnex
Clearwater, Fla.; Greenville, S.C.
In a statement to CRN, distributor TD Synnex, which has headquarters in Clearwater, Fla., and employees in the Carolinas, said that many workers “were personally impacted from the storm.”
“This week, a number of measures have been undertaken to support those affected co-workers both from the company and from co-workers themselves, including both helping co-workers clean out their damaged homes and donating supplies in the offices for affected co-workers to use,” according to the statement.
The distributor “is making donations to Feeding Tampa Bay, United Way of Greenville County’s Hurricane Helene Relief Fund and the American Red Cross to assist with relief efforts and is encouraging our co-workers to support those organizations as well.”
Verizon
New York
On Monday, telecommunications giant Verizon said in a statement that its Frontline Crisis Response Team is ready for Hurricane Milton and that it has staged a fleet of portable network solutions, including satellite-based portable network assets, in case fiber connections are compromised.
Verizon also has mobile generators to assist communities with commercial power loss, and engineers have ensured that batteries, generators and other backup systems are operational and refueled, according to the company.
For Helene-hit areas, Verizon also said that “more than 90 percent of our impacted cell sites are back on air.”
“Fiber, the delicate cables that connect cell sites to the rest of the network, is still out in many areas,” according to the company. “Our teams are working on alternate forms of connectivity for those sites, such as the deployment of temporary satellite assets, as well as nonstop refueling efforts to ensure sites remain in service for Verizon customers and first responders. We continue to work with power providers and fiber vendors, as well as state and government agencies to coordinate on priority restoration where possible.”
Verizon has seen improvements in Georgia around Brunswick, Waycross and Augusta. The Vidalia and Valdosta areas continue to “experience service interruptions related to fiber instability and sites bouncing,” according to the company.
In western North Carolina, Verizon continues “to evaluate satellite solutions to bring those towers online until fiber can be restored,” it said.
AT&T
Dallas
As Milton approaches, AT&T said in a statement Monday that its FirstNet Response Operations Group “is working around the clock to support public safety’s emergency communications and has liaisons engaged with local and federal agencies.”
The company has topped off generators with fuel at cell sites and switch facilities, tested backup batteries at cell sites and staged emergency response and network recovery equipment in strategic locations for quick deployment after Milton, according to AT&T.
On Monday, AT&T also said that its “network teams continue to make steady progress on our recovery efforts in the areas impacted by Hurricane Helene [and] will continue to facilitate communications for those affected and have opened our network where possible to allow customers from other carriers to stay connected if their own carrier’s service is unavailable.”
Skyrunner
Asheville, N.C.
Local ISP Skyrunner posted to its Facebook page Friday to say that about 50 percent of its infrastructure was back in service, with much of the restored service “running on generators that require constant visits and refueling as we await grid power restoration.”
“Some of our more remote locations may remain without grid power for some time, but we are actively working on solutions, such as increasing fuel storage at our critical sites, to keep services running reliably,” Skyrunner said.
North Carolina’s Polk County and surrounding areas saw “large sections of fiber transport being completely destroyed and, in some areas, simply gone,” with engineering plans under development to work around the missing sections.
“We are optimistic that these critical connections will be restored in the coming days,” according to the post. “We want to thank you all for your patience, understanding, and support as we navigate this situation together. We are committed to the communities we serve, and for us, this effort is personal. We live and work in the same areas impacted by this storm, and we are dedicated to ensuring that everyone gets reconnected as quickly as possible. We’re all in this together, and we will continue to work tirelessly until full service is restored.”
Starlink by SpaceX
Hawthorne, Calif.; Brownsville, Texas
Starlink parent company SpaceX posted on X Sunday that it and T-Mobile received emergency special temporary authority from the U.S. government to enable satellites with direct-to-cell capability for cellphone coverage in areas hit by Helene. X is owned by SpaceX Chairman, CEO and CTO Elon Musk.
“The satellites have already been enabled and started broadcasting emergency alerts to cell phones on all networks in North Carolina,” according to the post. “In addition, we may test basic texting (SMS) capabilities for most cell phones on the T-Mobile network in North Carolina. SpaceX’s direct-to-cell constellation has not been fully deployed, so all services will be delivered on a best-effort basis.”
Starlink also made the first month of service free temporarily for people in areas affected by Helene, according to the company’s website. Kit limits were also temporarily increased to 20 per residential account with an option for more for emergency response groups.
D&H Distributing
Harrisburg, Pa.; Clearwater, Fla.
D&H Distributing, which opened a Clearwater, Fla., campus with 200 employees about a year ago, is monitoring Milton, Chief Commercial Officer Marty Bauerlein told CRN in an interview.
“We’ve already told employees to take care of their families,” he said. “We typically are in the office on Tuesdays ... but we've told our people [to not] come in and that their safety is our biggest priority. … We immediately secured hotel rooms in northern Florida for our employees who wanted to leave the area.”
Two inside directors at D&H are also currently assembling people to help employees and others on Thursday or Friday as needed, Bauerlein said.
“If they have a situation like needing help cleaning out their homes or if they’re impacted at all by the storm, we’re going to band together and help our employees out,” he said. “And then over the weekend, we’re also looking potentially at doing some things in the community.”
D&H has redundant systems and backups, Bauerlein said. Channel partners can work directly with the company’s headquarters if needed.
Big Cloud Consultants
Asheville, N.C.
Craig Zimmerman, COO of Big Cloud Consultants, could get a text out to a CRN reporter on Saturday and Monday, but phone calls would not connect.
Friday night, electrical power returned for Zimmerman, but Saturday’s cellphone signal strength was notably worse.
On Tuesday, he emailed CRN to say the region “is not used to or equipped to really handle what happened.”
“Prior to Helene coming through we had a few massive rainstorms which left everything saturated so when the winds from the storm came, trees were simply uprooted,” he said. “In low-lying areas near rivers and creeks, entire towns have been washed away.”
He has heard that Asheville municipal water might not come for weeks or months. Cell towers are still not up and running, and he’s heard little to no communication from Verizon.
“It’s 12 days already,” Zimmerman said. “I would assume they could send a text message with an update since the power company has. This really means we are pretty cut off. No news, no pictures of the area, etc. Spectrum is also down almost everywhere with no communication.”
The first days of Helene’s aftermath, Zimmerman and his family “had to leave the house just to let family know we were alive” due to the lack of communications technology. He has seen a presence from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Guard helicopters flying overhead as part of the rescue efforts.
He credited iHeartMedia radio stations with helping the city of Asheville broadcast public updates twice a week and taking phone calls from locals.
Many Big Cloud clients reached out to check on Zimmerman and his staff, “which was so kind and thoughtful,” he said.
“We reached out to check on local clients as well,” he said. “We have staff based throughout the U.S. so our ability to continue to work with [our] clients wasn’t affected. I will say that it was super nice to see neighbors coming together to help others and make sure that everyone had what they needed.”
As for donations, he recommended people look to the Manna FoodBank, a private nonprofit in Asheville.