Tidal Basin Starlink

Hurricanes Helene & Milton Starlink Deployment (continued)

Operations Centers, Multi-Agency Resource Centers, law enforcement, and other operations and recovery functions. The Second Hurricane Hits Less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene, and in the middle of our Starlink deployment operations, Hurricane Milton hit the west coast of Florida as a dangerous Category 3 major storm on October 9, 2024. In preparation for the storm, FDEM trusted our logisticians to formulate a plan to quickly transport the bulk of the State’s remaining inventory in the path of Milton from the State Logistics Resource Center (SLRC) in Orlando, to Lehigh Acres, Florida, 150 miles south. This move ensured the protection and availability of additional resources, playing a key role in the ability to surge telecommunications capabilities. After Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, the demand for reliable high-speed internet connectivity skyrocketed due to back-to-back major storm impacts on the state. Operation Blue Ridge Support

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The impact of Hurricane Helene was felt well beyond the State of Florida. With devastating rainfall and flooding occurring in multiple states, the Governor of Florida pledged Starlink systems to help restore communications in isolated areas of North Carolina and Tennessee. The Tidal Basin team in Orlando launched into action to function check, download updates, and palletize 100+ units in a single day and have them ready for

transportation to support Operation Blue Ridge. Experts from Tidal Basin worked with teams on the ground in North Carolina to activate account subscriptions for each unit and provide on-call technical support. Demobilization and Future Preparation Prior to demobilization, the Tidal Basin performed quality control and system testing on 400 new units purchased by FDEM to bolster the state inventory delivered to the temporary staging area. After the integration of the new units, the demobilization team continued collecting deactivated systems, managing inventory, and transporting systems to the two respective staging areas in Orlando and Tallahassee while keeping units at the ready in 67 counties in preparation for future operations.

Staffing Continuity When facilitating Starlink management, Tidal Basin deploys the same staff as often as possible. This ensures continuity in our response and allows us to lean on the experience and knowledge built by these team members from previous deployments. Many of the experts who deploy for Starlink are the same team members who were on the first deployment for Hurricane Ian, building the program from the ground up. Our team members have varied backgrounds including emergency management, public safety/first responders, and information technology experts.