As the search for survivors continues, technicians said dozens of wireless signals have originated from the wreckage of the World Trade Center since Tuesday’s attack. In addition, an emergency communications team is collecting cell phone and pager information that could help locate survivors in the rubble and weed out false reports of people trapped.
“We Dd Have 50-plus open cases where we have had signals detected at ground zero since the attack,” said Kark Rauscher, who is heading up a coalition of wireless companies helping look for survivors.
“We realize that we may be the only hope that some people have, so we’re going to do everything we can,” said Rauscher, Lucent Technologies Inc.’s director of system reliability.
In one case, two people apparently trapped together in the wreckage have placed separate calls, possibly with separate phones, although they have not been heard from for at least the past day, he said.
The ad-hoc “wireless emergency response team,” composed of technicians from some of the major telecommunications companies, has begun searching for activity on about 2,000 wireless phone numbers of people believed trapped in the wreckage.
Wireless numbers for people missing after Tuesday’s attack can be provided to BellSouth operators at (877) 348-8579. The numbers were being passed along to rescue teams in New York.
Although an active signal from a wireless device would not indicate that its owner has survived the attack, it could help rescue crews focus on air pockets and basement areas of the rubble where people may be huddled awaiting rescue, a Federal Emergency Management Administration spokesman said.
If a live call is received from the rubble, experts have sophisticated radio frequency equipment that could provide an approximate location of the signal in the rubble. The Federal Emergency Management Agency would decide whether it was safe to dig in a particular area.
Denny Betz, a spokesman for Bell South, said the emergency team would like to receive the mobile device’s manufacturer, model number and pager pin number.
Bill Zucker, a vice president in wireless research for Lucent Technologies, said equipment can detect a signal if the device is on and the battery has power. The trapped individual does not have to be making a call or sending a page.
The directional antenna also can determine the phone number of the equipment, but cannot tell how deep the device is buried.
Karl Rauscher, Lucent’s director for network reliability, said the emergency team has been able to trace numerous calls that were made away from the rubble. This has discredited some missing person reports.
“We can tell if the call was from near ground zero or not,” Rauscher said. “We can tell rescue workers that at the time the call was made, the guy was driving across Long Island. We can tell if a call was made after the attack.”
Current technology, however, cannot pinpoint the precise location of a call or exactly where a device is buried.
The Wireless Emergency Response Unit includes service providers, equipment suppliers, government agencies and trade associations.
Source: MSNBC
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