telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (07/01/90)
Word has been reaching us the past few days of the tragic fires burning though parts of California, and the most disturbing news is that apparently much of the town of Santa Barbara is in ashes. Perhaps someone in the area could let us know what the effect has been on telco service in that area, and other parts of the state. Patrick Townson
art@opal.acc.com (Art Berggreen) (07/03/90)
In article <59846@bu.edu.bu.edu> TELECOM Moderator writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 463, Message 7 of 8 >Word has been reaching us the past few days of the tragic fires >burning though parts of California, and the most disturbing news is >that apparently much of the town of Santa Barbara is in ashes. Perhaps >someone in the area could let us know what the effect has been on >telco service in that area, and other parts of the state. Rest assured, Santa Barbara is still here. We're not exactly a "town". The general area has approx. 150,000 people. The fire was BAD though. Almost 500 homes were destroyed (and got too close to mine as well). The phone system did get very overloaded during the fire, causing problems for emergency services. Art Berggreen ACC
dgriffiths@ebay.sun.com (Darren Griffiths) (07/03/90)
In article <59846@bu.edu.bu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >Word has been reaching us the past few days of the tragic fires >burning though parts of California, and the most disturbing news is >that apparently much of the town of Santa Barbara is in ashes. Perhaps >someone in the area could let us know what the effect has been on >telco service in that area, and other parts of the state. Well, I'm not from the area, but I used to be and still have many friends there so I know a bit about what's going on. The fire started on highway 151 near Painted Cave. It burned down the highway and the San Marcos valley. A major residential area sits at the bottom of this valley and was entirely destroyed. Of the 500+ homes with major damage about 300 were completely destroyed. As far as phone service is concerned it was incredibly good. Many of my friends were evacuated, some for two days and they found out about the condition of their homes by calling and seeing if the answering machine picked up. The night the fire started the phones were out to the Hidden Valley area for a few hours, this was the area of about 3000 homes close to the path of the fire. The next day many calls into the area were greeted with a message "Due to the forest fire in the area you are calling your call cannot be completed at this time, please try your call later." If you called two or three times in a row you did get through though, also switching to a different long distance carrier sometimes helped. AT&T, as is my experience with most phone service, was the most reliable path into the town Cheers, --darren
6500king%ucsbuxa@hub.ucsb.edu (Scott King) (07/03/90)
In reguard to your posting about Santa Barbara... I live here, and I have seen the damage. I believe that Mark Twain said "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated". Granted, there are around 470 homes destroyed, but most of those were in the hills and asking for it (eg. surronded by a lot of brush) There were about ten businesses destroyed, but each only employeed about four people. Although the "sundowners" (a local version of a Santa Ana wind) were resposible for the damage on the first day, they quit on the second day and allowed the fire to be contained (the sundowners had been blowing for about 3 weeks). All in all, I would say that we should stop whining and start to count our blessings. The whole city would be gone had this happened a week prior. In summary, I would say that 1200 people lost their homes, 50 people lost their jobs and 100,000 people stepped in to help in some form. Scott King
lars@spectrum.cmc.com (Lars Poulsen) (07/04/90)
In article <59846@bu.edu.bu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >Word has been reaching us the past few days of the tragic fires >burning though parts of California, and the most disturbing news is >that apparently much of the town of Santa Barbara is in ashes. Perhaps >someone in the area could let us know what the effect has been on >telco service in that area, and other parts of the state. The reports .. have been much exaggerated. About 4000 acres of coastal foothill shrub burned, along with about 525 residences. The fire started at 18:02 PDT on Wednesday night; it is unclear whether it was deliberately set, or somebody just tossed a cigarette out their car window. The area has been suffering under a drought for about 4 years; water is severely rationed, and the city of Santa Barbara is checking out pricing for ferrying water down on ships from Canada. The chaparral was tinder dry and two days of 100-110 degree temperatures had brought it to a flash point. A "sundowner" wind condition (similar to a "Santa Ana") engulfed the hillside along highway 154 (San Marcos Pass road) in 40-foot high flames in minutes. The wind carried the flames downhill towards the city; within 40 minutes after it began near the top, it jumped across US-101 (the Camino Real freeway) near the county jail between Santa Barbara and Goleta, and a residential area where the railroad crosses "main street" went up in a firestorm; I heard the gas lines exploding from my house a half mile away. Throughout the evening, many neighbourhoods were evacuated. The fear was that the fire would burn out the Hope Ranch neighbourhood, a two-acre ranchette subdivision from the 1950's; but shortly before midnight the wind died down, and the fire stopped spreading. For the next several days, the hillside kept burning (I believe it was finally declared "controlled" this morning). Thursday night, there was some fear that another sundowner wind might drive the fire down towards the city through a different canyon. But the wind was much less severe, and actually drove the fire back to the already burned-over area. Thursday night around 9PM the wind died down, and we all breathed easier. --------------------- TELECOM RELATED STUFF --------------------- The E911 response center was located in the county complex in the fire zone, and had to be evacuated early on, along with the fire command post. This created a severe logistic problem, but fortunately, there were backup sites for both: The city had a command post downtown, and the county had a backup command post downtown. The GTD-5 system was heavily loaded; at one point, the dial tone delay was almost 30 seconds. The system went short on intercity trunks, but apparently the software can allocate the available trunks on a priority basis to the class-A emergency lines. My wife was in Texas, and I tried several times to reach her, alternating between MCI and ATT; mostly ATT worked better. (Probably due to ATT giving priority to OUTGOING calls). The telephone switch never failed, and service has not been disrupted since the fire. Our local college station is a training ground for Rock'n'Roll DJs, and has no useful news staff. Our "local" NPR affiliate is a repeater for the San Luis Obispo station, and our local APR affiliate is a repeater for KUSC, a classical station in Los Angeles. But one of the commercial stations hooked their AM ("talk radio") and FM ("adult album") transmitters together, and went live-all-news without commercials for 27 hours. On the second day they started a pledge drive for a relief fund and raised $80,000 before the sun went down. The local television station also suspended regular programming, but did not have quite as good information during the critical hours. (When the fire zone partitioned the town, and one reporter could not get back to the studio, he drove 40 miles away to Santa Maria to get an uplink, and I don't think he ever got back on the fire line). I am very impressed with the way GTE handled this disaster. This area may not be typical, but we really have had outstanding service since the GTD-5 system was installed four or five years ago. Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer CMC Rockwell lars@CMC.COM [Moderator's Note: Your mention of the need to evacuate the emergency response center and fire command post itself was interesting, and brings to mind the fire here in Chicago, October, 1871. The Western Union agent on duty downtown that Sunday night stuck around the office until is was apparent the building was going to be on fire soon. In an interview in the {Chicago Tribune} in 1901, he remarked on the bell in the steeple of City Hall. The City Hall Fire Alarm Office had an operator on duty at all times to ring the bell alerting residents to a fire. The bell was actually operated by a mechanical device, and the setting of the gears detirmined the cadence of the bell, which in turn gave a coded reference to the fire location. Four rings (pause) was a general alarm. Long after most of City Hall had burned to the ground and the fire alarm operator had fled in terror, with the streets in the area deserted, that bell continued to sound. The Western Union guy said it was 'the eeriest thing I had ever encountered ... the bell tolling with no one to listen or heed it ... and finally the steeple itself caught (fire) and the bell crashed to the ground with a monstrous clang ... '. PT]