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From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Massive Service Outage in Northern Illinois!
Message-ID: <13607@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 17 Oct 90 05:35:19 GMT
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Michael Glodek must feel like a million dollars today. He's the
landscaper who was building a new lawn for a home at 3521 Madison
Avenue in Oak Brook, IL on Monday morning when his digging machine
uprooted what Illinois Bell termed a 'very major, very important' part
of their interoffice network covering northern Illinois.

Glodek said, "I didn't do a JULIE because no one said there were any
lines in the immediate vicinity." JULIE is the organization which
keeps track of underground telephone and electric cables, plus water
and gas pipelines in northern Illinois. A spokesperson for Illinois
Bell retorted that "Every contractor is to do a JULIE before they
start work, and he knew it as well as anyone..."

Glodek said his machine 'snagged something down there', but he thought
it must have been part of an old septic tank system which was common
in that area many years ago ... so he decided to 'dig right in and
root it out ...' and in the process he literally severed several
thousand conversations then in progress on the fiber optic cable. 

Folks at IBT found out about it instantly, of course, but finding out
*where* the problem was located was another matter. Some frantic
employees of Illinois Bell set out in various directions looking for
trouble. But as in May, 1988 after the Great Fire, their cellular
phones were dead also, since the cable which had been cut served both
Cellular One and Ameritech here. Using two-way radios, the employees
began coordinating their search. Once the cut was located, two-way
radios were used to bring many employees to the location in minutes.

 From about 9:30 AM Monday, when the cable was cut until more than
twelve hours later, at 10:04 PM, Bell employees worked feverishly to
restore service in what was described as the 'worst telephone outage
in the area since May, 1988'.  It took only about fifteen minutes to
locate the cut and Mr. Glodek, who was still standing there wondering
what to do next ...

In terms of severity, the disruption in service knocked out all
interoffice traffic between central offices in the 708 area code. Some
re-routing of calls was possible, but like Hinsdale in May, 1988, the
cut cable was so important and so strategic that very little could be
done for the several hundred thousand subscribers in northern Illinois
who were unable to place calls outside their local exchange all day.

If you have a detailed map of northern Illinois, you will note the
area involved: From Elk Grove on the north to Hinsdale on the south;
from Oak Park on the east to St. Charles on the west ... all
interoffice service was out, and much local service around Oak Brook
was out.  All cellular service throughout 312/708 was out, since both
Cellular One and Ameritech have their offices in Schaumburg, right in
the affected zone. Naturally many paging devices were out, since these
are also operated by companies in the western suburbs.

Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood lost all phone service
for ten hours, until 8 PM Monday night. Illinois Bell was able to
provide the hospital with a limited amount of cellular service and
two-way radio service late in the morning. 

911 service was out everywhere for several hours. Police officers
cruised the streets and used their radios to relay reports from
citizens. 

Ohare Airport operated at one-third its normal schedule, since the
control tower was totally cut off from the FAA Chicago Air Route
Traffic Control Center in Aurora, IL.  

FAX machines and computers throughout the area were out of service,
and several companies simply let their employees go home for the day.

The abruptness of the cut, forcing thousands of calls off line all at
the same time caused some major confusion for several minutes as
Illinois Bell operators became deluged with requests to 'assist in
dialing' numbers which not only did not answer, but simply returned
dead silence to the caller. Once network re-routing got under way,
limited as it was minutes after the problem was isolated, the burden
on the operators became somewhat less, but Chicago (312) callers, who
were never without operator service (lots of 708 people go over the
cut cable to reach an operator) still bombarded the operators for
several hours with requests for assistance in calling the suburbs. 

No one in 312 or 708 could reach the cellular companies to find out
why their cell phones were dead ... much of the affected (708) area
could not even reach the operator, repair service, directory or the
business office.