Friday, May 06, 2011

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - The April 27^th Tornado Outbreak devastated many areas throughout Alabama and left many counties including Madison without power. Despite having no power, closed roads and minimal cellular phone coverage, Atlantic Group, a Huntsville, Ala. based small business specializing in aerial photography and land sensing solutions, had to rally team members throughout the Limestone and Madison County areas as well as resources to help with emergency response and damage assessment.

Due to the power outage, Atlantic took up residence in a downtown Huntsville hotel which was running on a generator and provided a strategic team of imagery technicians and senior staff with enough power to run five work stations in order to process high resolution imagery. Technicians and Managers worked around the clock in order to process and deliver imagery data sets. Due to the poor cell coverage, Atlantic President, Patrick Harris had to act as a liaison between the flight crew and processing team; relaying information and data. The mandatory curfew made this process difficult but not impossible, all driving was done during day time hours and processing was done around the clock.

By the end of the third day Atlantic had acquired data for 16 affected counties. 

Hexagon Geosystems, a worldwide supplier of airborne sensors and software with offices in Huntsville, made support staff and on-site assistance available to the team and provided additional Intergraph software to allow work to be performed in the limited network environment available during this time sensitive project.  

Senior Staff began developing flight plans immediately, utilizing several news outlets, internet, email and correspondence with local residents to determine the track these storms took so the flight crew could begin acquiring data Thursday Morning, April 28^th.  No information was available from the National Weather Service until three days after the event.

Atlantic team members have been and are continuing to work around the clock to provide FEMA, NOAA, USGS, the National Guard, the Sheriff's office, local utility officials, County and State GIS officials as well as local EMA officials with emergency response and damage assessment imagery.

"First and foremost Atlantic would like to send out our thoughts and prayers to those who have lost loved ones and were affected by this horrific event. Secondly, I would like to commend the support, corporation and collaboration from national, state and local officials in our effort with limited resources and communication. Thirdly I would like to thank our staff's families for their understanding and support as our staff has been working nonstop since tornados touched ground," said Steve Denney, Atlantic Group CEO. "We [Atlantic] are lucky to have a dedicated staff of professionals that have truly stepped up in this time of need."

Atlantic is honored to be able to help in this recovery effort by providing the necessary imagery so that the affected areas can receive proper assistance from FEMA and other national and local entities.

For more information, please contact Kate Breitbach, Sales and Marketing Coordinator, at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or (256) 971-9991.