On the Big Island of Hawaii, as many as 111,000 customers lost power when tropical storm Lala came through, according to Hawaiian Electric. Crews were working to bring it back, with a warning from the utility that rural customers could be dark for weeks.
It was one of four disasters in a single week of August 2026. Storms and deadly flooding cut electricity to half a million people across the Midwest. Wildfires sent people fleeing in the western United States. A powerful earthquake struck Colombia. In Indiana alone, CNN counted at least seven dead from the flooding, and more than 5 million people in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic stayed under flood watches that Sunday.
The phone in your pocket
Lee Ann Rawlins Williams, a clinical assistant professor at the University of North Dakota, argues in The Conversation that the smartphone has turned into emergency infrastructure for nearly everyone. It brings the warning, shows the evacuation route and the closed road, finds the shelter, reaches the family, and calls 911 for the injured.
It also fails in familiar ways. Phones get lost or left behind in a rush. Batteries die when there is no outlet. Signal wanders away when it is needed most. Williams sees a new face of the digital divide here: ownership and skill no longer settle it. The harder question is what people do when vital information sits on a device that suddenly goes dead.
Her answer is not to use less technology. Alerts and online maps save lives. What helps is redundancy, meaning backup ways to get the same information that need neither electricity nor a cell connection.
What planners and families can do
Some cities already work this way. New York City’s Notify NYC program pushes emergency news over text, email, phone, its website, social media and sign-language video, as well as on TV and radio. Miami-Dade County in Florida pairs digital alerts with TV, radio and local networks. Williams adds that some communities post warnings on traffic signs, and community centers often turn into places to get information and charge a phone.
For households her advice is plain. Keep a written list of key phone numbers and basic medical details where you can find it. Agree on a place to meet if communication breaks down. Know more than one evacuation route. Pack backups of that information in a go-bag, ideally in a waterproof bag. Her test question: if you had to leave fast without your phone, what would you need to know?
In the emergency itself, save the battery for essential use. And check on neighbors, especially anyone rural, isolated or less mobile, since not everyone gets the same alert. She notes that in North Carolina in 2024, after the remnants of Hurricane Helene, residents found that credit cards stopped working once communications went down.
Sources
- Dealing with disasters increasingly requires a smartphone (The Conversation)
- Tropical storm Lala wreaks devastation to some areas of Hawaii's Big Island (Guardian)
- Midwest flooding begins to ease, but one more round of storms is on the way (CNN)
