News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
One slice through a fiber optic cable in Sandy, Oregon, put a major crimp in Sisters businesses on Wednesday, July 25.
According to Qwest spokesperson Mary Healy, an excavating company cut the cable with a backhoe while digging a trench for a power line. The company had called as required by law to locate underground cables, Healy said.
Somehow, the private locating company, Locating, Inc. provided bad information, Healy said.
The cut knocked out long-distance service to Qwest customers in Sisters and throughout Central Oregon. For much of the day, people in Sisters could not call out of the area on a land line. Businesses found their credit card readers inoperable. Travel agents could not access their scheduling system.
Cell phone traffic surged and many callers were unable to get service because the system was overloaded.
The outage was reported at 8 a.m. and was repaired five hours later.
"This, fortunately, was a very clean cut," Healy said.
"The (excavating) company used a backhoe and just cut right through it."
Repair crews spliced the line without difficulty.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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