Puerto Rico’s ATLAS® P25 system survives hurricane Maria

When Hurricane Maria ripped through the center of the island last month and wiped out much of its infrastructure, as expected, the Puerto Rico’s ATLAS P25 system proved to be resilient. When it was time for Puerto Rico to upgrade to a P25 emergency communication system in 2011, it was faced with many challenges due to the complexity of an island deployment and its vulnerability to hurricanes and other natural disasters. Puerto Rico knew it needed a system that could withstand the most extreme conditions, so it selected a 20-site ATLAS P25 system from EF Johnson Technologies, Inc., the P25 communication specialist for JVCKENWOOD.

The ATLAS P25 system was put to the most severe test when just two weeks after Hurricane Irma skirted the north side of Puerto Rico, the eye of Hurricane Maria made its way directly through the middle of the island. Puerto Rico suffered catastrophic damage to the main power grid, knocking out electricity to 100% of the island. High winds caused major damage to most of the radio towers and disrupted the microwave network that connects the tower sites together. Even though the ATLAS system was split in two or more parts, with its coreless network architecture, it was able to continue providing localized wide area communications to first responders.

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