Tuesday, July 20, 1999
911 service cut off for 12 hours
Warren Co. had power line fire
BY MICHAEL D. CLARK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MASON — Hundreds of residents in and around this Warren County community endured a night cut off from emergency 911 service after fire destroyed a phone switching box.
The power-line fire, which started around 8 p.m. Sunday in the 4800 block of U.S. 42, rendered the nearby telephone switching box inoperable. Up to 800 customers in the northeastern parts of Mason and parts of Deerfield Township were without phone service, including 911 emergency service.
Phone service was fully restored by 9 a.m. Monday, said officials from Sprint, which owns and operates the switching box.
No one was injured in the power-line fire, and no incidents were reported during the more than 12 hours it took to fully restore phone service, said officials of the Warren County Department of Emergency Services. Steve Brash, spokesman for Cinergy, said the cause of the fire on a connector box of electrical lines is unknown. The fire initially cut off power to about 300 residential and business customers from 8 to 9:40 p.m., he said.
Another 500 electrical customers in the Mason and Deerfield Township area also lost power for about a half hour when Cinergy's emergency electrical crews had to cut power while conducting repairs, Mr. Brash said.
As a precaution, police and fire officials in Mason and Deerfield increased patrols during the outage, said Mason Deputy Fire Chief Steve Pegram.
“We had no incidents to my knowledge,” said the deputy chief, adding that the affected area is sparsely populated and most businesses were closed.
Warren County Sheriff's officials said there was no noticeable increase in calls to the county dispatcher's office during the outage.
Sprint spokeswoman Chriss Harris said the exact number of customers who lost phone services is unknown but no more than 800 were served by the switching box that was destroyed.
Ms. Harris said the phone exchanges affected were: 398, 459, 336 and 573.
“There's not very much we could do other than return service as soon as possible,” Ms. Harris said. She added that Sprint emergency crews were delayed in working on the box until electrical repair crews had finished their work and made the phone repair work safe.
Such prolonged phone outages are rare, she said, and usually occur during severe storms.
Tresie Long, spokeswoman for Cincinnati Bell Telephone, said residents are usually helpless in such situations unless they have access to a cell phone or are able to drive to another neighborhood to use a pay phone unaffected by the outage.
The April 9 tornado that tore through northeast Hamilton County, killing four and causing millions of dollars in damages, was the last time a large number of Tristaters were without 911 or other phone service for a prolonged period, Ms. Long said. About 1,000 residents temporarily lost phone service following the tornado.
When phone service is being restored, police, hospitals and 911 service have first priorities before work is done to re-establish regular residential and business service, she said.
David Eck contributed to this story.
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