Denver company rescues Harvey-soaked cellphones
In the chaos and terror of the Texas flooding, getting to safety is first on anyone’s list. But once out of harm’s way, a working cellphone is crucial to modern life — and sometimes difficult to come by, given that delicate electronics and water don’t mix.
To help people get up and running again, cellphone drying companies are offering free services and setting up mobile charging stations.
One firm drove a truck 1,000 miles from Denver to Houston, a roughly 15-hour overnight sprint, to help bring dead phones back to life.
“I feel like my head’s back on my shoulders,” said Bernard Scott, 56, whose phone was dried out by staff from TekDry, the Denver company that’s working out of a truck parked next to Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center, offering free services. “My phone’s got everything, my emails, my Instagram, my family contacts. Everything.”
Without a phone, those affected by Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath can easily drop entirely off the digital map. Smartphones are increasingly how Americans access the digital world.
A survey by the Pew Research Center late last year found that for 12% of American adults, their smartphone was their only access to the Internet.
Scott’s phone got water damaged when he was heading for a vehicle to get him out of the rain and the path of flooding.
TekDry offers phone and electronics services at about 600 sites nationwide, mostly in Staples stores. They typically charge $69.99 if they get your phone working again.
The company has six locations in the Dallas area, but none in Houston. When CEO Adam Cookson realized the extent of the disaster in Houston, he and another staffer loaded up a truck with a generator, two drying machines, a bunch of phone charg- ing stations and bottled water and started driving from Denver.
“We had barely set up (in Houston) when a line formed,” Cookson said.
A TV crew lent them power from their generator, and the team started drying out phones, a 30-minute process that involves putting them under pressure in a heated box to boil off the water at low temperatures that don’t damage the electronics.
“Phones are clearly important to people. One thing that surprised me was how many of them wanted a picture taken of us giving them their phone back. It really brought home how crucial they are in people’s lives,” Cookson said.
In general, TekDry finds it can save about 50% of phones if they’re brought into one of its service centers within 36 hours. In the case of phones dunked during Hurricane Harvey, most have been wet for days, and their owners also tried to turn them on, both of which lower the chance of saving the phone.
Other local drying shops are also offering free services. DryBox, a San Antonio-based company, is waiving the $39.95 charge at its 11 Houston-area self-service stations at H-E-B stores. Users can enter promotion code HARVEY.