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campbell Damage to underground cable disrupts phone service
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Campbell Officer Eric Manning makes a call on a cellphone at the police station. The city building, including police and fire departments, lost landline service Wednesday night and still was without it Thursday. Also affected were 2,500 other customers in the city. Police and fire department calls on their main numbers were rerouted to cellphones. 911 service was being dispatched by Mahoning County to Campbell through radios and remained unaffected.
By Jeanne Starmack
campbell
Landline telephone service to 2,500 customers, including the police and fire departments, still was cut off Thursday evening as crews worked to repair a damaged line.
Phone service was interrupted around 9 p.m. Wednesday, city officials believe, after someone who was digging on Wilson Avenue ruined an underground cable.
The phone company, Delta Telecom of Poland, told the city it hoped to have service restored by sometime Thursday, said city Finance Director Sherman Miles. He said the “worst-case scenario” is that phones will be down until sometime today.
People who need 911 service still can dial it as usual, the police department said. The Mahoning County dispatch center will radio those calls to the city police and fire departments, police said.
The police, fire and water departments’ main numbers were rerouted Thursday to cellphones, and that was frustrating for police who were dealing with dropped calls, static and calls that were breaking up.
“The only problem is, with a cellphone, signals get lost,” Detective Sgt. John Rusnak said Thursday morning at the police station.
Officer Charles Butch, clutching a cellphone, chose that moment to illustrate Rusnak’s point.
“These phones suck,” Butch told police Chief Gus Sarigianopoulos as he stood outside Sarigianopoulos’ office to complain about spotty reception.
Upstairs in the city building, those offices also were unable to receive calls.
It wasn’t clear Thursday exactly which section of the city was affected. Miles said “a large chunk” of it was, and Sarigianopoulos said he believes customers on Tenney Avenue, where city hall is located, and northeast were affected.
Miles said, though, that he lives in the eastern part of the city and had phone service.
The Vindicator’s calls to a phone-company representative were not returned Thursday.
By late Thursday afternoon, Sarigianopoulos was at the scene watching crews work on the damaged cable.
AT&T crews were handling the work for Delta Telecom. AT&T always handles work on outside lines, Miles said.
Sarigianopoulos said crews were announcing that they were finished restoring service to city hall, though not the rest of the affected customers. But as of 9:30 p.m. Thursday, landlines for the police and fire departments and residents were still down.
An officer at the police station said at that time that crews reported having problems with water in the lines.
Sarigianopoulos said crews were at Madison Street on Wilson, then they moved on to the intersection with Robinson Road.
“There’s a lot of work they have to do,” he said. “They’ve got to do a lot of digging.”
He said that the city will try today to determine who damaged the cable.