Radio Asheville launches an emergency alert network built to survive a total blackout, like occurred with Hurricane Helene (North Carolina)

In response to Hurricane Helene’s devastating blackout of all digital communication systems, Radio Asheville – WPVM 103.7 combines solar-powered backup broadcasting, phone-and-satellite text alerts, and a local ham radio partnership into one system designed to keep Western North Carolina informed even when the grid, cell towers, and internet all go dark. Or during a cyberattack.

Radio Asheville (WPVM-LP 103.7 FM) today announced the public launch of its emergency alert program, inviting households in the region to sign up at RadioAsheville.org/alerts. The launch follows the final approval of the station’s wireless carrier registration this week — the last technical piece of a system the station has spent a year designing, testing, and rebuilding from the ground up.

The project is in response to the life-altering realizations during and after Hurricane Helene. When the storm hit Western North Carolina, the power grid, cell networks, and the internet all failed at once — for some residents, for weeks. In that silence, two things kept working: analog radio, including Radio Asheville 103.7, and the region’s amateur (ham) radio operators, who kept relaying real information — road conditions, water distribution points, wellness checks — to each other by voice when every digital system was down, from their own tower located atop Spivey Mountain. Radio Asheville took a hard lesson from that: to be a real lifeline for its listeners, the station first had to make itself unbreakable when the power and digital services we all overly depend upon go dark.

Read more – Mountain XPress: https://bit.ly/4ynjP85