‘Derecho’ Storm Knocks Out 911 and Phone Services Again

New York experienced the brunt of the summer’s second derecho. About 14,000 digital phone customers in New York lost service Thursday night as commercial power failed, according to a New York State Public Service Commission spokesman. These customers lacked a dial tone and couldn’t make or receive any phone calls, the commission said. “Telecom work crews are working to restore services as quickly and safely as possible,” the spokesman said, noting that thousands remained without power as of Friday morning “primarily due to commercial power problems, along with outside plant damage including fiber and coax cable breaks, and individual subscriber drop damage.” Those 14,000 customers were located primarily in Binghamton and Broome counties.

Phone customers in Delaware County, N.Y., also suffered some outages of both phone and 911 services that lasted about 11 hours. “Our 911 services were out, most of our teleservices were out,” said Hancock Telephone Company President Robert Wrighter. He described watching the storms appear around 5 p.m. Thursday and attributed his company’s problems to a large pine tree that fell and caused damage to their main fiber cables. That incident caused outages for about 1,500 customers as well as some of the region’s wireless customers, Wrighter said. The outages affected long-distance and 911 service but still allowed for local seven-digit dialing. Hancock Telephone Company works “really closely” with local authorities and they helped arrange for 911 alternatives in the community, he said.

"Telephone work crews coordinated with the local power utility to gain safe access to the damage area, and commence repairs,” a New York State PSC spokesman told us about the Delaware County incident. “The company also requested, and received, work crew assistance from a neighboring telephone company. While 3-digit 911 service was interrupted as a result of the cable damage, telephone customers were able to make seven-digit local calls and the Hancock Fire Department was placed on alert to handle any incoming emergency services calls.”

The Hancock Telephone Company restored full service about 4 a.m. Friday after doing fiber slicing early in the morning, and handled everything as it was intended to be, Wrighter said. There’s a record of four ambulance calls that did successfully go through the 911 alternative, he said. The New York State PSC staff were in “direct contact” with Hancock throughout the storms and aftermath and believes Hancock operated “in a safe, efficient manner, and appear to have followed best practices for events of this type,” a PSC spokesman said. The commission also received reports Friday morning that Frontier Telephone had 22 host and remote central offices operating on backup power but no reported outages, the spokesman told us.

Ohio was spared any telecom consequences, said two spokesmen for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. “It wasn’t as bad as everyone thought it would be,” one spokesman said about the storm. Another described the storm as “rather intense” and “strong and sudden” but over quickly. The Ohio PUC received “no levels of notification” regarding any serious telecom problems. The state has experienced some electrical outages but no phone or 911 problems, the commission said. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said the same, with a spokeswoman saying there was “nothing reportable” to the commission. Connecticut also avoided any damages aside from “limited power outages overnight,” said a spokesman for the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, who said his state received “not the extent that New York did” in terms of the storm. A derecho, from a Spanish word meaning “direct,” is a fast-moving straight line (as opposed to churning like a tornado or hurricane) storm.