A co-worker at KMOV-TV told me a story about attending a 4th of July fireworks display at the arch grounds. He and his wife got separated in the crowd, so after the fireworks show he tried to call her. For about ten to twenty minutes he couldn't get a call through and guessed that the nearest cell tower was being overwhelmed by calls from people who had attended the same event. Cell phone providers monitor the call volume on their networks and have the ability to reroute some calls to prevent a cell or group of cells from being overwhelmed by the number of calls coming out of a particular area. Sometimes the volume is too much, as was the case after Hurricane Katrina, the Minneapolis bridge collapse and at times during the Southern California wildfires in October. Cell providers do a lot of planning to be prepared for major emergencies, but freely admit that their networks are not built to handle the extremely high volume during these recent events. The number one, "plan-B" that they recommend is text messaging. A text message uses a tiny amount of bandwidth and is usually able to squeak through when a network is jammed with voice calls. If you don't know how to text message, we've put together a simple lesson to show you how just click here or just find the nearest teenager, I'm sure they're an expert.