Why were the cell phones not working during today's recent earthquake?

Question

I am a student living in southern California and I just happened to wonder why the cell phones didn't work after the few minutes the earthquake happened, sorta like 10 min. after or so but I'm kinda curious- if there were no cell phone connections then wouldn't it be more worst if (God forbid) something big happens? and yea that was like my first biggest earthquake experience, I remember there was a really big one in the Philippines but then I was sleeping, my school room pretty much shook! I was nervous because I thought of the building going down.

Yes its the 7/29/08 5.4 southern California quake and the cell phones didn't work for a few minutes after the quake happened- lots of my classmates questioned it and I want to know if someone knows.

Answer 1

Our phones didn't work for about an hour.  It was horrible.  I tried calling  out towards the end of the quake and it would'nt work. From what I understand, its because too many people were trying to call out at once.  The system was pretty much over loaded.  Crazy huh....and scary to know you wouldnt be able to get ahold of loved ones in an emergency.

Answer 2

cause everyone was trying to call everyone else

Answer 3

Cell phones weren't working because of an increased amount of traffic.  

After the quake our traffic at Sprint PCS jumped 800%, our switches couldn't handle it.  

I recomend text messages.  They use about 1/600 of the amount of bandwidth.

Answer 4

probably b/c it affected the cell phone towers? im sure if the earth is shaking the towers were moving