Working after Hurricane Charley, the SAR task force in Port Charlotte had found one good spot to get Nextel coverage and would drive back and forth from the staging area to make calls.

Text messages are great for spotty coverage. You can send one and then let the phone retry sending the message until it finally finds coverage.

For charging, I'd make sure to have a car charger and probably a cigarette lighter socket "splitter" to charge multiple things from one vehicle.