I don’t think anyone picked up the calls. The fact that the phones rang only means that the towers or satellites were trying to connect with the phones.
Besides, all the batteries would be dead by now anyway.
That’s right. The batteries should be dead. If the phones are underwater they wouldn’t be working, either. But this has happened to more than a dozen families; they place a call to a cell phone, someone picks up the call and then disconnects.
This occurred yesterday and was reported here on FR.
I’ve been following this situation for a while, it is now day three.