by Don Pritchard
STE. GENEVIEVE – The origin of the 17-hour internet outage which began at 1 p.m. Monday and lasted until 6 a.m. Tuesday has been identified.
An official with Citizens Electric Corporation said a third-party crew hired to replace utility poles on Highway 32 between Ste. Genevieve and Farmington accidentally struck the fiber line while it was drilling a hole for a pole.
“The internet outage that affected Ste. Genevieve and Perry County earlier this week occurred when a contract crew of Citizens Electric accidentally cut a fiber line,” stated Steve Elsea, Manager of Member Services. “The contractor followed the procedure of calling 811 prior to digging so that a utility locate company could mark where any underground utilities may be. When the locate companies mark the locations of underground utilities, there is a designated area on either side of the marked location in which the contractor doing the digging must take added precautions to avoid hitting the underground utility. This often means hand digging or other means to ensure the underground utility is not compromised. Where pole locations were within this small corridor, the Citizens contractor took the added precautions required. Where the fiber was hit was outside this corridor, so it was a situation where the utility locate company mis-marked the actual location of the fiber line.”
Spectrum Director of Communications Wes Shirley said basically the same thing in response to emailed questions to him.
“The outage you referenced…in Ste. Genevieve was a direct result of third-party damage caused by utility crews replacing poles between Farmington and Ste. Genevieve. The damage occurred when non-Spectrum crews drilled underground and hit our fiber lines. Our crews responded quickly to begin the repair process, which took longer than anticipated due to additional damage to our network as well as delays from severe weather in the area overnight. Crews had to seek shelter and safety of our teams is a priority.”
Shirley said Spectrum immediately began to repair the break but was hampered by the weather.
“Our crews responded quickly to begin the repair process, which took longer than anticipated due additional damage to our network as well as delays from severe weather in the area overnight. Crews had to seek shelter and safety of our teams is a priority,” Shirley said.
Shirley added that “If impacted customers have specific questions about their account, they can contact our customer service department. As to why some customers have services come back online before others – that has to do with the process of splicing of fiber optic cables. Each fiber cable contains many strands (sometimes hundreds). As each strand is repaired, some customers come back online before others. Full restoration occurs when every strand is repaired. In this case, more than 280 fibers were damaged and spliced.”
Shirley said the problem was with the locates.
“The utility crews were following locates that were not correctly marked. Our fiber lines were properly placed and buried.”