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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: BOOM! there goes WorldCom
> You're right. I forgot about the decomissioned pipelines. Although,
>you'd be surprised how stupid some of these morons with backhoes are! I
>remember a major MCI cut along their west coast route a few years ago
>that took out the entire northwest for 8 hours. The guy was 600 yards
>away from where his permit allowed him to dig. He stopped when he cut
>the fiber and shut his hoe down. When they got out there, they found
>that he was digging right next to train tracks, was inches from cutting
>a high voltage power line that surely would have killed him, and was
>also fairly close to a gas line.
It's not always the equipment operator. I was witness to a ConTel fiber
cut along Route 66 aboard MCLB Barstow. The fiber was cut by, get this,
a road grader. The fiber was buried (if you could call it that) along
the shoulder of the road (which sloped upward about three feet), three
feet from the edge of the road, _at road level_! It was also over 6 feet
out of alignment with the orange markers.
In the process of widening the road, the grader caught the conduit and
broke it, along with the fiber. The operator didn't even know he did
it until the ConTel crew showed up.
Crude ASCII art of where the fiber was buried (in profile):
-----------
/
_______________/ X <------- Fiber
^
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Road
This cut supposedly (according to the ConTel repair crew) killed phone
service, including 911, for 120 square miles of eastern California.
I heard that they went to a SONET ring shortly after this incident.....
--
Eric Kozowski VP Internet Services
[email protected] Structured Network Systems, Inc.
(800)390-5945 Support A Verio Affiliate
(800)881-0962 Sales/Info http://www.structured.net/
PGP Key fingerprint = 0A E4 91 B8 BD CB 3E 95 42 12 04 4E 14 DF 86 76
'They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.' -- Benjamin Franklin 1759
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