Internet, telephone, cell phones, 911 go quiet
By Tara Massagee
For The Herald

HIGH SPRINGS – There was no phone service. No banks were open. Some pharmacies had closed unexpectedly. Cell phone reception was limited. And 911 wasn’t working at all.

For nearly a day, parts of four cities and three counties were cut off from the world -- all because a fiber optic line that is the width of a strand of hair and lays a few feet beneath the surface was cut.

High Springs and the rest of the Crescent Communities witnessed what it was like to be left stranded when a fiber optic line was accidentally cut on Wednesday, Feb. 11, cutting phone lines and Internet access for about 7,000 people.

Now, one week later, officials look back to asses the risk of this happening again, but on a grander scale. And then there is the question of what if somebody wanted to intentionally cut the lines in the future.

A city utility worker for High Springs was removing the remains of a tree when a fiber optic line was struck, causing phone and Internet access to be severed from about 10 a.m. until about 8 p.m., said High Springs Police Chief Jim Troiano. The cut line also affected cell phone service.

Troiano said High Springs residents were not able to make 911 calls or place calls out of the city. But the Combined Communications Center in Gainesville was contacted and was able to re-route 911 calls to the appropriate authorities, he said.

Anyone with a 454 exchange was able to make calls to other people and places with a 454 exchange, said Robert Kelly, the Windstream area manager for Florida. Windsteam is the company that owns the fiber optic lines.

Kelly said a fiber optic line is a “glass cable that can transmit high speed data and voice, via a light signal.”

He said the line looks like a glass tube with a protective inner metal jacket, with buffer tubes that house fiber strands.

The fibers are “teeny-tiny, thin, little strands of glass,” said Alice Hartnett, media relations specialist for Windstream.

The strands are as thin as hair, Kelly said.

Fixing a fiber optic line can be time-consuming and expensive, Kelly said. A piece of cable is added to the broken glass and then fused together on each end. He said a fuse, splicer and a trained technician are required to properly fix the line.

Kelly said there were two fibers within the tube, one connecting High Springs to Fort White and the other to Alachua. Both the lines were severed at the same time, which caused telephone and Internet service to be limited, he said.

“If they had only cut one of the fibers, we could have re-routed calls, and customers would have never known,” Kelly said. “…The line cut was the one that connects High Springs to the outside world.

Troiano said that communications were affected in Alachua County, Columbia County and even Marion County.

The Winn Dixie store in High Springs lost communication with the servers that the store uses to place its orders, Manager J.W. Woodard said. He said the cash registers were unaffected, and debit and credit card machines were still able to be used.

But the pharmacy was unable to fill prescriptions, because the store could not make contact with insurance companies, he said.

“The city handled it as well as they could,” he said.

Bank of America had to shut down for the rest of day and re-direct its customers to other locations, said spokesperson Nicole Nastacie.

“Our concern was addressing our customers’ needs,” she said.

Future Concerns

These two lines wiped out service to thousands of residents, and there are many more of these lines throughout High Springs and the surrounding cities.

Because of the possibility of somebody down the road purposely cutting the lines, The High Springs Herald contacted the United States Department of Homeland Security to ask questions about any precautions that may be taken to protect communications in the future.

The Herald was referred to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. A spokesperson for that agency said they were not able to answer such questions because they did not have an expert available.

Locally, Troiano said the thought of a terrorist act down the road crossed his mind.

“Anything’s a possibility,” Troiano said. “…Fortunately, that did not happen.”

He said there is surveillance in place to make sure random acts of terrorism are not committed, and he figured if someone saw something suspicious, they would call the police department immediately.

Hartnett said the likelihood of an act of terrorism happening was difficult to pinpoint, because the company typically does not see those types of scenarios.

She said people do accidentally cut the lines from time to time, but there are things in place to ensure they are not happening on a routine basis.

One item that is available to residents is a program called Sunshine State One Call. A customer can call in and say they will be digging, and a representative will come out, free of charge, and find the lines where they will be digging.

Kelly said lines being cut are not a common problem.

“People don’t go out to cut them, just to cut them,” he said.