News & Press Releases

Cut cable clogs communications -- again

Publication: Times Standard, Eureka, California
Chris Durant, John Driscoll and James Faulk , 6/9/2007

A construction crew working on a slide along U.S. Highway 101 cut a fiber optic cable and Humboldt County off from the rest of the world for several hours on Friday.

Some law enforcement agency 911 systems went down, along with Internet, some long distance and cell phone service.

According to Charlie Fielder, Caltrans District 1 director, the North Coast's only fiber optic line was cut around 11:30 a.m. by a contractor -- Van Meter Logging of Redding -- working to repair a storm-damaged portion of Highway 101 near Weott.

”They were excavating and inadvertently hit the line and broke it,” Fielder said.

The position of the line had been pointed out to prevent this very thing from happening, he said.

AT&T was on site in the afternoon and most service was restored around 3 p.m.

”We know how critical it is to have fiber optic service up here, and this will just underline that once more,” said Fielder. “It's just a short loss of service, but unfortunately it will affect everyone up here.”

The California Highway Patrol dispatch center said 911 calls stopped around 11:30 a.m.

The Eureka Police Department said its 911 system still functioned but the loss of Internet hampered other tasks.

In Fortuna, the 911 system for the police department was working on a limited basis. Dispatchers had to obtain information from the caller that was usually automatically provided by the 911 system.

Arcata's 911 system was not affected.

Scanner traffic indicated officers were having trouble getting a hold of people related to cases because cell service was down.

”In everyday police work we rely on cell phones, pagers and the Internet,” said EPD spokeswoman Suzie Owsley. “This hasn't crippled us but it's definitely a kink.”

AT&T contacted Calfire headquarters in Fortuna to alert them their 911 was down, but could not provide any other information.

Calfire Capt. Bill Christen said the command centers were able to get a hold of offices.

”We're still in contact with personnel via radio,” Christen said.

The Humboldt County Sheriff's Department said its 911 system did not have any problems during the outage.

Some stranded motorists also had problems getting in contact with AAA roadside service.

Friday's outage joined a list of several others that have hit the region in the last six months for a variety of reasons.

Bob Morse of Morse Media, also president of the Redwood Technology Consortium, said AT&T's only allowance for redundancy is to shift Internet traffic to the old microwave system.

”Obviously, it's not working,” Morse said.

Morse said the economic effects on local businesses can be huge, and one of the few ways to compensate for it is to have a satellite backup, which some local businesses have.

There is another way.

In a brief press release laced with a hint of pride, the city of Rio Dell announced Friday that its system was up and running. That's because it goes through a separate private system built by 101 Netlink with equipment from Carlson Wireless. It also provides free wireless Internet to the town. That system was created through a partnership with Access Humboldt, Carlson Wireless, Security National and Suddenlink.

Parts of Fortuna and Sun Valley Floral Farms in Arcata -- which signed up to the same system Thursday night -- were also able to continue business as usual, said Jim Carlson of Carlson Wireless.

”Timing was everything here,” Carlson said.