An overhead photo, taken by a drone, of Czechowice Dziedzice, Silesia, Poland, during the 2024 floods.
Instant Network teams, part of the Vodafone Foundation, use their skills and training to provide emergency connectivity to people across the world displaced by disasters and trauma.
The 2024 floods in central Europe have dramatically affected people’s lives there. It’s not just homes, businesses and civic buildings that have been destroyed or severely damaged. In many places, the flood waters have also cut people off from essential services, such as roads, electricity and mains water. That includes mobile and internet access too, essentials that Vodafone Foundation’s Instant Network teams can help with.
Team effort
Instant Network teams are deployed across the world at short notice to help displaced people struggling without connectivity, most commonly those affected by natural disasters, but also refugees. Each team is staffed by people drawn from across the many countries in which Vodafone operates and are trained to handle themselves in unpredictable and potentially dangerous situations, people such as Pete Carter.
Pete – along with a team of other Vodafone staffers drawn from Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK – was deployed to help the embattled Polish towns of Bardo and Stronie Śląskie, as well as outlying communities in Poland. Invited by and working with the authorities on the ground, the team provided emergency connectivity not just to members of the public, but also to the emergency services themselves.
Pete and the team provided connectivity to seven different places in total over the course of a week. From a school in the devastated town of Stronie Śląskie, drafted into service as both a distribution hub for emergency supplies, as well as a base and dorm for first responders. To a farm acting as a base for attempts to reach remote villages that had been cut off from the wider world by the floodwaters. It was from this farm that the authorities used Vodafone’s emergency connectivity to order a medical airlift evacuation for a woman with broken bones.
Away from the grand drama of medical airlifts, emergency connectivity can bring relief to people in times of extreme stress. “One lady we met in the mountains – she logged onto our WiFi for the first time and her face just lit up as her WhatsApp exploded with people who’d been trying to get hold of her.
“The alternative for her would’ve been hiking two or three hours up a mountain in the hope of finding a bit of signal reception from an undamaged mast somewhere,” Pete explained.
The exact networking equipment used by any Instant Network team can vary greatly. In this case, they used six specialised WiFi routers that connect to the wider internet using satellite connections, with each router capable of providing WiFi service to hundreds of people if needed. By providing internet access through WiFi, this equipment also had the advantage of being able to serve all sorts of devices – no matter their specification (within reason) – from laptops to tablets, not just phones.
As mains power had been severely disrupted by the flooding, Pete and the team brought their own generators to power not only the networking equipment, but also several charging stations to serve the public, capable of charging up to 30 devices at a time. They also brought their own food, sourced their own transportation and secured accommodation outside the flooded areas, so as not to strain the stretched resources within the disaster zone itself.
Transporting this precious haul of network equipment, along with the team’s supplies, in a horse box-sized trailer was far from easy though. Off-road vehicles, from 4×4 SUVs to other motors that were even more specialised and ruggedised, were needed to navigate around the impassable roads and through the water-logged countryside.
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When natural disasters occur, connectivity vital to co-ordinating relief efforts is often knocked out, so emergency connectivity needs to be set up as quickly as possible.
Hazardous situations such as flooded, unfamiliar terrain mean that not just anyone can join the Instant Network teams. Applicants not only have to pass a multistage interview process, but must also successfully complete a hostile environment training course.
Pete completed his hazardous environment training in the Brecon Beacons during the subzero depths of the Welsh winter. There, he learned skills such as first aid for traumatic injuries, off-road driving, map-reading and navigating by compass, cooking in the field, surviving with no or limited supplies and how to interact with stressed, traumatised people.
It’s all designed to hone people’s situational awareness so that they are better able to deal with the unknown. Periodic training refreshers helps keep Pete and his teammates up-to-date and well-practiced.
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Although the hazardous environment training was tough, Pete’s usual responsibilities not only helped him pass it, but also put him in good stead to deal with the unexpected while on deployment. As a planner in Vodafone UK’s business resilience and crisis management team, Pete has helped the company deal with unexpected events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “So I’m used to having to make decisions without all the information and in a rapidly changing landscape.”
Giving back; getting back
Once the local mobile networks were back up and the authorities decided that they were no longer needed, Pete and the team returned to their home countries via Dresden.
Although all Instant Network team members are coached in mental health resiliency, as part of their hostile environment training, many found the contrast between the distressing devastation they had just witnessed and the mundanity of everyday life in Dresden to be extremely jarring.
To help others in times of need, that's just part of who I am.
Pete Carter
“Some of the people we helped owned guesthouses, but they have nothing left and no idea when tourism will return, so they have no idea where their next paycheck is coming from. But in our Dresden hotel, there were bustling crowds of tourists and businesspeople going about their day, wanting for nothing, with an abundance of food everywhere. The difference was so stark,” Pete explained.
Mental health support is available to Instant Networks team members – and indeed all Vodafone employees – through the company’s Employee Assistance Programme, so that they can process the distressing or traumatic scenarios they sometimes deal with while on deployment.
But Pete’s continued involvement with the Instant Networks team is driven by the hardships he has witnessed, not in spite of them. From his work in central Europe and previous deployments maintaining WiFi networks at refugee camps on the Canary Islands, to volunteering through his local church, Pete has an irrepressible desire to help those who cannot help themselves.
In Pete’s own words: “To help others in times of need, that’s just part of who I am.”
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