I’ve seen the pictures – but I can’t really believe what I see up and around Duluth. The flooding is terrible. You think about the roads and the roofs and fields – but not the telecommunications. But apparently the floods took down a lot of the means for communication this week. Internet access went out for Frontier customers. Cell and 911 access was out all over.
I want to thank Paul Bergman for taking the time to answer my questions while in the midst of cleaning up the water damage…
Yes the safety of all the citizens of Lake County was again jeopardized because of an old communications network that was never updated after many failures such as what has just happened. Only a network with redundant features like Lake County is constructing would have eliminated the loss of 911, Internet and cell phone use again for our citizens.
It’s remaniscent of the outages they experienced in January 2010 when a broken steam pipe left the area without internet, phone or wireless service – and it makes the case, more dramatically than I suspect they’d like that improvements are needed in the area. From what I’ve heard no one has been hurt – but I can only imagine the unnecessary worry and added running around involved when a catastrophe hits and citizens have no way to phone for help and the community has no way to check in with citizens or with other departments.
Friends in the area have described the damage to me – and it sounds as if road repair and maybe construction will be required. Perhaps that’s a silver lining and an opportunity to install conduit while they’re working – a “Fix Once” spin on the “Dig Once” strategy.
There has been a lot of debate on need for improved infrastructure in Lake County – one issue concerns the percentage of served versus unserved homes. Perhaps the definition of served needs to come with a reliability factor in the area. Two major outages in two and a half years seems less like a fluke and more like a weak link.
[Added June 21: more info on the storms from Duluth News Tribune]
Mediacom customers subscribing to Voice, Video, Broadband, and Enterprise Fiber in the communities of Two Harbors, Beaver Bay, and Silver Bay were not impacted.
I imagine those folks were thankful to have the Mediacom services up and running!
I don’t think that a “broken steam pipe” cause the outage in January 2010, even though that is what Qwest claimed.
I think the article at http://www.twoharborsmn.com/event/article/id/19670/ explains it nicely.
Steve – Very curious. Thanks! I’ll post an excerpt for others. Really makes the point that redundancy is needed in the area! You’d think homeland security would take a look at such a strategic gateway maybe with an eye towards investing.
From the article…
But Jerry Pelofske, manager of the Duluth Steam Cooperative Association that runs the coal plant and steam lines for the city of Duluth, said no such incident occurred. He said a Duluth Steam worker received a call from Qwest at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, about four hours after the outage began. Qwest wanted some markings done on where steam pipes were located, Pelofke said, reading from a work detail report.
Qwest spokeswoman Joanna Hjelmeland, who originally gave reporters the pipe rupture explanation, did not offer any new details when told of Pelofske’s contention.
“We are working on an investigation to confirm the exact cause of the external damage to our facilities,” Hjelmeland she said. “Until our investigation is complete, I’m not able to discuss more details.”
…
“One of the bigger elephants in the room we have not said out loud is, because we are border counties with Canada, a possible threat to our national security caused by a broken phone line and no redundant way to reroute.”
Sheriff Johnson said when Lake County was considering using Qwest for its communications, including the 911 system, it was assured there would be a backup line. After two previous line breaks and no available backup, the county had to create the internal emergency plan that was used Tuesday.
“We talked about outages,” he said of discussions with Qwest. “They said it would get re-routed.”
Lake, St. Louis, and Cook counties are awaiting federal money to begin broadband projects that would have redundant lines.
“This emergency revealed a glaring weakness to our 911 service and we need you to act now so the counties can begin construction of this enhanced fiber network,” Bergman wrote in the letter to Oberstar.
A friend in Cook Count notes that they were without service too. Sorry I didn’t realize/recognize that earlier!