Wildfires underscore telecom challenges | CTV News [Video]

As wind-driven wildfires broke out on the Hawaiian island of Maui last summer, killing more than 100 people and destroying thousands of buildings, a telecommunications blackout kept many residents in the dark.

The outage exacerbated an already devastating situation in areas such as the town of Lahaina, home to around 13,000 people, where both evacuation orders and first responders’ emergency communications were hampered.

In addition to the downing of all cellphones and landlines in Lahaina, the area also faced a failure of commercial electrical service for days.

Authorities are still putting together the pieces to understand how so much went wrong throughout the incident. A key lesson from the Maui wildfires has emerged: resilient telecom networks are crucial when disaster strikes.

Companies and regulators in other jurisdictions, including Canada, are taking note amid growing wildfire activity in remote regions.