In times of disaster, telecommunications infrastructure is often damaged, destroyed, or impacted in some way, leaving emergency services with limited resources to deal with the ever-increasing nature of the disaster and impacted civilians without access to help or loved ones. Trained personnel have the correct gear to use when emergency strikes, including ways of communicating amongst themselves, but civilians often don't. Telecommunications infrastructure is often severely impacted during a disaster, which means that not only are the more common means of communication unavailable, impacted local communities are set to be without access during the recovery phase. Most recently, the world has been collectively mourning the loss of life, animals and natural resources as a result of the Australian bushfires. While this level of fire disaster has been unprecedented, there are fears this could become the new normal. One of the terrifying aspects of surviving this disaster, for emergency services and civilians alike, was a lack of access to regular communication channels throughout the worst of the fires. Without reliable, ongoing, easy-to-access communications in the face of danger, there is a real risk that many more lives will be lost - including the heroes on the front line.
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