04/28/2006: "County-wide Disruption of Communications"

By Brendan Cowan

At approximately 7:15 this morning (Friday, April 28), a problem with the Verizon owned fiber optic infrastructure on the mainland resulted in the loss of long distance phone and cell phone service, internet, and (for a brief period) 911 service for the entire County.

Calls within the County were unaffected. Cell phones able to connect to towers with different routing (Mt. Constitution for instance) were also able to retain service.

As of 8:45, the majority of the connection has been restored; however there may still be small roadblocks in service if usage is high. Connection is expected to be fully restored later today.

During the outage, San Juan County 911 was swamped with dozens of phone calls from islanders inquiring about the loss of phone service. This is a good time to remind everyone:Please only call 911 for true emergencies. This is doubly true during power or phone outages, storms, or other wide-spread emergencies as Dispatch will already have its hands full. To inquire about disruptions in utility services, please contact your provider directly, and do not call 911

(Brendan Cowan is the Director of San Juan County Department of Emergency Management)