An emergency backhaul link is created between a first radio base station and a second radio base station over an air interface in response to an interruption or failure of a primary backhaul link of the first radio base station. In some embodiments, the first radio base station and the second radio base station are provided with no additional equipment to support the emergency backhaul link. In other embodiments, the second radio base station includes a tunable receiver configured to switch between receiving mobile device traffic on an uplink frequency and receiving backhaul traffic on a downlink frequency. In other embodiments, the second radio base station includes a receiver configured to receive backhaul traffic from the first radio base station over a downlink frequency. After the primary backhaul link is restored, the emergency backhaul link is torn down and backhaul traffic resumes on the primary backhaul link.