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FBI: Seattle Phone Outage Intentional
A fiber optic cable failure that caused a five-hour telephone outage affecting nearly 60,000 Qwest customers here and other phone customers elsewhere in Whatcom County was intentionally caused, the police chief said Wednesday. Police and the FBI were investigating. "We donât know what the motive was," Police Chief Randy Carroll said. "We know it was a caused event, and thatâs to say that it was intentional." At FBI regional headquarters in Seattle, spokesman Ray Lauer would say only, "Itâs a pending investigation. Beyond that we canât comment." Scattered outages were reported by Verizon land-line and cell-phone customers outside Bellingham in Whatcom County. The problem was caused by the failure of a fiber optic line in Stanwood, about 60 miles to the south in Snohomish County, Qwest spokesman Michael Dunne said. Company personnel were trying to determine why the cable failed. Service was restored by early Wednesday afternoon. A system of cables along the Interstate-5 corridor links Bellinghamâs long-distance lines to a switch in Seattle. "What occurred was that Bellingham was toll- and 911-isolated," Dunne said. "So the vast majority of Qwest customers in Bellingham could not call outside their local calling area. They could call their neighbors but they could not call Seattle, for example, or 911." Police officers were asked to report for duty and police vehicles were stationed at major intersections. Firefighters across the county were asked to relay emergency needs to county dispatchers. There were at least two calls to dispatch that originated from citizens going to fire halls for help, county emergency officials told The Bellingham Herald. Service in the rest of the county was intermittent, said Melissa Barran, spokesperson for Verizon, which provides much of the phone service to Whatcom County customers outside of Bellingham. Some phone users outside Bellingham were able to make calls out of the area. Many calls did not go through because of the volume of local calls being made, Dunne said. Cellular phone service was disrupted throughout Whatcom County as well as the San Juan Islands, said Georgia Taylor, a Verizon Wireless spokesperson. Most of neighboring Skagit County continued to receive service, however. Fiber optic phone lines in Snohomish County were severed in September 2001 as well. The impact of that outage - the line was cut twice in two days - was limited to Whatcom County, and created phone blackouts that underscored the vulnerability of the countyâs 911-dispatch system. Is this the ultimate âDenial of Serviceâ attack? Cut the fiber connections to Microsoft? Posted by: Frank Martin 2003-09-04 |
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