Phone lines severed in West Newport

A large section of Newport Beach has been without telephone service

since Tuesday morning, when a construction crew sliced through three

cables that contained around 6,000 phone lines.

The incident took place at a construction site on Orange Avenue

and Old Newport Boulevard, where a contractor is building a new

medical office facility.

Workers for SBC, the telephone company that services Newport

Beach, began repairing the cables Tuesday afternoon.

Stacie Gates, the area manager for SBC, said the crews planned to

work on the scene 24 hours a day and expected to have the lines

reconnected later this week.

Residents and businesses on the west end of Newport Beach began

noticing their lines were out shortly before noon Tuesday. Steven

Smith, a spokesman for SBC in Southern California, did not have exact

numbers of how many people were affected by the outage, but he said

he had been contacted by at least 600 customers who had lost service.

Wednesday afternoon, the question of how and why the cables were

cut was a point of contention.

Officials from both SBC and GKK Works, the Newport Beach-based

contractor for the project, acknowledged that the cables had been cut

by workers from a company subcontracting with GKK. Rick Norquist, the

GKK superintendent for the project, identified the subcontractor as

Professional Electrical Contractors of Anaheim.

Norquist claimed that SBC officials had told the subcontractor

that the phone cables were out of service and could be severed. The

subcontractor needed to cut the wires to make room for a concrete

vault on the property.

Soon after the work began, Norquist said, SBC provided different

information.

“After we cut three of the cables, SBC showed up and said, ‘Don’t

cut any more,’” Norquist recalled.

the supervisor for the electrical subcontractor who Norquist said

spoke with SBC, declined to comment for this story.

Steven Smith of SBC offered a different account of the exchange

between SBC and the construction company, saying that SBC officials

informed the workers of the live wires and ordered that they be left

alone.

“The folks who were doing the cutting were clearly informed as to

where the lines were, and the markings are still on the ground as we

speak,” Smith said.

“My understanding is those markings are accurate. Why they went

forward with the cutting anyhow, that wouldn’t be something I would

be able to answer.”

The pavement next to the construction site on Wednesday was dotted

with orange painted markings, one with an arrow pointing toward the

area where the cables had been cut. Gates could not say, however,

whether the markings implied that the cables should remain untouched.

Smith would not say if SBC would end up paying for all the repair

work on the cables or if it would seek reimbursement from the

contractors.

“Our first priority is repairing those lines and getting service

restored,” Smith stated. “Once that’s done, we definitely will

conduct a very thorough investigation of this incident and determine

how it was caused and if other folks are liable for this.”

Whatever the cause of the incident, it left numerous residents of

West Newport without phone service beginning Tuesday. Some of the

lines had been restored Wednesday, but other residents expected to

wait until Friday or Saturday.

Newport Beach City Councilman Steve Rosansky, who represents the

area where the outage hit, said that two of the three phone lines in

his office had gone dead.

“It’s certainly an inconvenience,” he said. “I don’t have a fax in

my office, and one of my business lines is down. I still have

Internet service because it’s on cable.”

Hoag Hospital did not lose any lines Tuesday. Spokeswoman Debra

Legan said the hospital has a backup telephone system in case of

emergency, but said that administrators took precautions anyway after

hearing about the problem.

“They did check the phones,” Legan said. “We proceeded to contact

our physicians to see if any of their phones had been impacted. As it

turned out, many of them had been, so we’ve been keeping in touch

with them over cell phones.”

Other businesses in the area found themselves at a loss Tuesday

morning. Ray Bastani, the owner of the 7-Eleven on Superior Avenue,

said phones were vital to his store because it is open 24 hours a

day.

“If something happens, we cannot call the police,” Bastani said

Wednesday morning. “I give my cell phone to the clerks in case

something happens.”

The store’s phone line was working again Wednesday afternoon.

Also affected by the phone outage was Newport Beach’s Utilities

Department, which operates out of a yard on 16th Street.

Dan Auger, telecommunications coordinator for the city, said that

the utility workers were using an alternate phone service while the

SBC crews finished the rewiring.

“They’ve rerouted calls that were going to utilities back to City

Hall, and then forwarded them back to cell phones so they can get

calls from residents,” Auger said.

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education and may be reached at (714)

966-4617 or by e-mail at [email protected].