On July 7, APCO International First Vice President Jack Varnado served as a panelist during the FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau’s Hurricane Season Resiliency Roundtable. The event focused on lessons learned from recent hurricane seasons and strategies to strengthen coordination between all stakeholders. During the discussion, Varnado reflected on his experience during Hurricane Ida to emphasize the importance of keeping 9-1-1 systems resilient and fully operational during and after severe weather events. He highlighted the need for emergency communications centers to receive timely, actionable information about outages that may impact 9-1-1 and stressed the value of open lines of communication and regular collaboration between public safety agencies, communications and utilities service providers, and government partners before, during, and after a severe weather event.
