When the Weather Turns: Wireless Solutions for Disaster Recovery
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When the Weather Turns. Wireless Solutions for Disaster Recovery.
October 2026 | 4 minute read
On July 27th, an EF-3 tornado more than one mile wide tore through Menasha, Wisconsin. It was the widest on record for the region and took down power lines and the networks that city hall and the schools run on.
WiscNet, a Wisconsin nonprofit network, deployed its emergency kits, which included satellite communication antennas and ten Mobile Beacon hotspots to restore connectivity for city hall, the Dpeartment of Public Works, and multiple schools.
“We’d be dead in the water without it,” said Andrea Oskey, Network & Systems Administrator for the City of Menasha, after the Emergency Kits were deployed. “We’re able to continue business and help the residents with what they’re going through.”
Menasha isn’t alone this year. Even as NOAA forecast a below-normal Atlantic season this year, Tropical Storm Arthur dropped nearly 30 inches of rain on parts of Louisiana in June, causing more than $1 billion in damage. In August, wildfires forced roughly 67,000 people out of the Spokane area.
While hurricane season runs through November 30th, the risks from extreme weather run year-round.
Without the line, there is no plan
Most continuity plans cover the data, the people and the building. Not all cover the connection that all three depend on. Your files are in the cloud, your phones run over the internet, your case records, telehealth visits, and payroll live in someone else’s data center. When the line goes, so does the plan.
And lines do go down. The causes can be mundane: power loss, cut fiber backhaul, or washed-out roads that keep fuel trucks from reaching generators. No single network survives everything, cellular included. Resilience comes from having multiple connectivity paths to avoid any single point of failure, and a plan for switching between them before you need it.
Two kinds of wireless, two jobs
Wireless isn’t one thing in a continuity plan. Fixed wireless keeps the building running. Mobile hotspots follow the people beyond the reach of fiber when they are on the move and in the field.
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The advantage is speed. A wireless connection can be live the day a device arrives. Repairing a damaged fiber or copper circuit takes as long as it takes, and after a disaster, every crew in the region has a queue.
What it looks like in practice
Menasha, Wisconsin: tornado.WiscNet’s Emergency Kit packs its gear into bright orange ruggedized roller cases. After the July tornado, the kits, including Starlink antennas and Mobile Beacon hotspots were delivered to the city. The Menasha Joint School District, “completely in the dark,”according to tech supervisor Greg Kehring, was back online before the school year started. WATCH FOX NEWS VIDEO
Altadena, California: fire.The 2025 Los Angeles fires took out the Altadena Library’s circuit to CalREN, just as residents needed the library most. Mobile Beacon supplied LTE SIM cards for CENIC’s Disaster Recovery Point of Connectivity, which plugged into equipment already on site. Service came back in less than half the time estimated to restore the original circuit. CENIC is now testing Mobile Beacon lines for out-of-band network management.
Spokane, Washington: wildfire.When fires destroyed some 850 buildings in August, Spokane Community College added Wi-Fi hotspot checkout to its recovery support. Mobile Beacon provided
twenty-five hotspots to connect residents displaced by the fires.
We’ve been here before. After Hurricanes Florence and Michael in 2018, Mobile Beacon replaced damaged devices at no cost for customers in FEMA disaster zones and donated up to twenty-five
hotspots per eligible nonprofit.
Five questions for your continuity plan
Are you and your organization prepared for a potential crisis or natural disaster? Do you have the tools and plans in place to ensure business continuity? Consider these questions as you look ahead and get prepared:
1. What goes dark if your primary line does? List the services: phones, EHR, student systems, payments, public Wi-Fi.
2. Does your backup take a different path? A second line from the same provider, in the same conduit, is not a backup. A wireless link is.
3. Can your router fail over on its own? Many business routers accept a SIM or USB modem. Test the switch on a calm Tuesday, not during a storm.
4. Who needs to work away from the building? Staff, case workers and students need hotspots charged, activated and assigned before the evacuation order.
5. What powers it? A hotspot outlasts a desktop, but a battery bank or generator decides whether it lasts the week. None of this requires a big budget. It requires deciding now, while the sky is blue.
Plan for the second path
Mobile Beacon provides affordable 5G and LTE service to schools, libraries, healthcare providers and nonprofits, over T-Mobile’s network. That includes BeaconEDGE fixed wireless for sites that can’t afford to go offline, and hotspots for the people who keep working when the building closes.
Talk to us today about adding a wireless path to your continuity plan before the next storm has a name. CONTACT US
