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NYS Senator Crafts Bill To Keep Cell Towers Operational After Storms

Tropical Storm Isaias damage in NYS's 40th Senate District
Courtesy of the Office of NYS Senator Pete Harckham
Tropical Storm Isaias damage in NYS's 40th Senate District

A New York state senator whose district was slammed by Tropical Storm Isaias last week hopes to remedy one of the outage problems through legislation.

Democratic state Senator Pete Harckham says in addition to electrical power outages, many residents in his 40th District also lost cell phone service after the August 4 storm.

“And after a day or so, cell towers are going down because batteries are dying, and that’s inexcusable, so I’ve got legislation that would require all cell towers in New York state to have a week’s worth of backup generation capability,” Harckham says. “It’s inexcusable when first responders can’t communicate with each other because the cell tower’s just out of power.”

Currently, wireless carriers are not required to have backup power supplies for their cell towers.

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