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accidents/disasters. Recently, a communications failure occurred that was the worst in 37 years of satellite serve. Some major problems with the telecommunications satellite Galaxy IV drastically affected 120 companies in the paging industry (Rubin, 1998). Radio and other forms of news broadcasts also were affected. The pager failure not only affected personal and business communications, but emergency management and medical personnel as well. Although telephone calls by land lines are among the safest communication technology, and the most resistant to space weather effects, they have also been in rapid decline thanks to the wide spread adoption of cellular and mobile phones, especially among the under-30 population. According to an article in The Economist [2009] customers are discontinuing landline subscriptions at a rate of 700,000 per month, and that by 2025 this technology will have gone the way of telegraphy. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of households with cell phone-only subscriptions rose from 7% to 20%. In terms of space weather vulnerability, there is one important caveat. Without an electrical power grid, conventional land-lines fail, and cell phones may not be recharged even though the cell towers may have emergency back up power capability. An example of this vulnerability occurs whenever natural disasters strike and cell towers are unavailable, or the crushing load of cell traffic renders the local tower network unusable. Moreover, one does not have to wait for power grid failure to have an impact on cell phone access during episodes of solar activity (Space Weather — Impacts, Mitigation and Forecasting — (https://www.vsp.ucar.edu/Heliophysics/pdf/Odenwald_Space Weather-Final.pdf). Vulnerability Assessment. Communication failure can have the following potential impacts within a community: • Telecommunications system outage; • Economic disruption; and • Disruption of community services. Communications failures have a greater potential to produce adverse economic impacts in business-based rather than retirement or residential communities. On the other hand, communications system failures in residential and retirement communities may put more human lives at risk. Indian River County's vulnerability to communications systems failures is Indian River County Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan Basic Page 70