On April 30, due to the severe flooding in the St. John Valley in New Brunswick, Canadian officials at Public Safety Canada activated the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters. As a result, surveillance satellites were quickly directed to start providing high-resolution imagery of the flood zone to Canadian agencies and emergency management personnel. In this instance, images were beamed down from space by a pair of Canadian satellites along with Nigeriasat-1, which is a Nigerian satellite that is part of a multinational consortium known as Disaster Monitoring Constellation International Imaging.

These images are easily accessed online at www.disasterscharter.org.

Across the border at the same time, the Maine Emergency Management Agency and Aroostook County emergency management personnel were completely unaware that this satellite operation was under way. Instead of relying on any satellite-based surveillance, Maine used aircraft to monitor flood conditions up and down the St. John River.

Specifically, MEMA was unaware that Canadian officials had their own surveillance satellites scanning New Brunswick during the floods, unaware that Canada had activated the International Charter so that high resolution imagery – clearly detailed visual maps – could be gathered from surveillance satellites operated by other countries, and finally, if it ever happened, unaware that any notification of this activity had been issued by either Public Safety Canada or provincial emergency management personnel in New Brunswick.

While Canada had activated the International Charter only two or three times since it was established in 2000, the U.S. has activated it on numerous occasions. In fact, before Canada activated it on April 30, the previous activation in North America took place in March when the U.S. Geological Survey did so as a result of extensive flooding in the Midwest. The USGS activated it again on June 10 as a result of the extreme flooding in Indiana and Wisconsin.

There is no question that MEMA and local disaster response personnel might benefit from some further training focused on how and when satellite-based imagery might be useful, particularly in support of large-scale recovery and relief operations.

However, this does not explain the glaring communications gap that emerged in early May involving Canada, Maine and at least two U.S. federal agencies, including USGS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The fact that at least three satellites went completely undetected as far as Maine officials are concerned as these same satellites lined up overhead and were making a visual record of what was unfolding along the St. John River is more than a little puzzling, especially when Maine has embraced so much satellite equipment in the past few years for emergency communications and disaster response purposes, including GIS and GPS systems.

At a drill last fall in Waldo County, for example, this writer observed a pair of satellite-equipped Maine National Guard vehicles parked in proximity to a mobile command post from the Bangor Fire Department. Atop all three vehicles, satellite dishes were prominently deployed.

Satellite phones are now widely deployed in multiple state and county agencies as backup communications tools, even in hospitals and clinics statewide. And in the last federal defense budget, Sen. Susan Collins requested $3 million so Maine Army National Guard personnel could be equipped with hand-held devices capable of using either satellite or cellphone links in support of their medevac operations in Iraq. The list goes on.

The availability of satellite-based services and updated satellite imagery in disaster response operations has been discussed at length since Hurricane Katrina. By the way, the U.S. activated the International Charter as part of its post-Katrina relief and recovery operations on the Gulf Coast.

Satellites are unsurpassed in terms of wide area surveillance. However, when it comes to situational awareness, aircraft and umanned aerial vehicles can provide outstanding persistent coverage of disaster zones. But in this instance, satellites were already on duty overhead, and Maine simply had no idea they were up there.

The flood of 2008 has provided Maine with a wakeup call. While it may not be necessary to activate the International Charter and assign satellites to survey disaster zones in Maine every time a river spills over its banks, the flood of 2008 demonstrates that there are times when the damage suffered is far too great and tapping every available resource – in space and elsewhere – just amounts to good common sense.

Peter J. Brown, a freelance writer from Mount Desert, has worked on satellite communications and disaster response projects with the Maine Emergency Management Agency and others.