Responsibility Blog

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Our guest blogger today is Jackie Moran. She works in the Verizon Wireless Federal Government Relations group.

I wanted to give you an update on the work we’ve done to strengthen our wireless network capacity in areas devastated by wildfires in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The fires have burnt through hundreds of thousands of miles of land, and now the summer rainy season is about to start, threatening to turn much of this area into flood lands.

Our Crisis Response Teams set up portable network repeaters and Cells-on-Wheels near remote fire lines in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona within hours of requests from local authorities. Existing nearby cell sites have been boosted to full capacity — all to bolster wireless service in remote areas for emergency crews. Our teams have also provided cell phones, data devices, charging stations and bottled water at many of our retail locations in affected areas.

Our Crisis Response Teams are fully engaged to support local authorities in the string of fires throughout the region, and have provided assistance in the High Park Fire in Ft. Collins, the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs, the Little Sand Fire and Weber Fire in Southwest Colorado, the Flagstaff fire in Boulder, and the Corral fire in Helena, Montana.

Mountain Region government account managers David Walsh, Debbie Essert and Todd Dreiling remain in near-constant contact with their government customers since the first weekend call. Network employees, including Tom Morgenthien, Jason Shelledy, Joel Carter, David Campbell and Marty Lawrence, made sure all systems were moving voice and data traffic and they remain on high alert. Marketing and Ops team members Chris Kanive and Chad Griffin prepped and delivered emergency-response phones and established a Verizon crisis response tent near the evacuation center.

In the Southwest Region, Network teams have been on wildfire response duty since early May. Already this summer, the team has boosted coverage and capacity at the command centers of major fires including the Whitewater-Baldy Fire near Reserve, New Mexico, the Little Bear Fire near Ruidoso and at the Poco Fire near Young, Arizona.

We have also set up a Colorado Wildfire Assistance text-to-donate campaign and the Verizon Foundation has activated its Disaster Relief Incentive Program that matches employee donations dollar-for-dollar through July 13. The Foundation also awarded a $10,000 disaster relief grant to the American Red Cross to help those affected by the High Park fire.

As we did in our 2011 response to Arizona’s largest wildfire, our teams are working feverishly so that our network will help firefighters, the U.S. Forest Service, and residents. Our Crisis Response Teams in the West are truly living up to our Credo of “running to a crisis.”