telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (03/14/89)
Illinois Bell will install an $80 million safety system to prevent another widespread telephone outage like the one caused by the fire in Hinsdale, IL last year. The fire on Mother's Day, May 8, 1988, wiped out service to 38,000 Hinsdale customers. An additional 475,000 customers were unable to make calls outside their local communities. Because Mother's Day call volume is traditionally very heavy, the loss of the Hinsdale gateway that afternoon caused a network traffic jam of monumental proportions throughout the Chicago area until calls were re-routed. It was the worst outage in the history of the telephone industry, and took Illinois Bell close to a month to restore service to everyone. Under the new plan, to be fully implemented by 1992, each central office will connect to two larger area offices. If a fire or other disaster strikes one area office, or toll center, calls would automatically be routed to another gateway. The worse that could happen under this plan would be an isolated outage wiping out service to 80,000 customers. Bell is also constructing three alarm centers to monitor all central offices around the clock; they are installing new sprinkler systems in major offices; and are switching to flame resistant electrical cables. Bell anticipates having one million customers connected to backup systems, or alternate gateways, by the end of this year. They expect to have over two million customers thus configured by the end of 1990, and the remainder cut over by the end of 1992. Illinois Attorney General Neil F. Hartigan last Frday again demanded that Bell create a fund to compensate businessmen and other customers who he claims suffered more than $100 million in damages. Bell says it is not liable for such damages under state law. Also on Friday, the state fire marshall and the Illinois Commerce Commission released results of a ten month, $1 million dollar probe into the Hinsdale fire. Illinois Bell paid for the study. The fire began when an exposed power cable came in contact with another metal-covered power cable. Investigators believe workers inadvertently stripped insulation off the exposed power cable while doing work a few months earlier. The Hinsdale station was unmanned on that Sunday. At 4:20 PM, an automatic fire alarm system tripped in the alarm reporting station in Springfield, Illinois, alerting a technician. Instead of calling the Hinsdale Fire Department, as required by Bell's operating procedures, the technician chose to first ignore the alarm (because it had falsed on a frequent basis in recent days). When the alarm tripped again, a few minutes later, the technician called a Bell supervisor at home in Wheaton, Illinois. Some ten minutes later, the supervisor tried calling the Hinsdale and Downers Grove fire departments, but by this time area phones were going out of service. Meanwhile, a Bell employee arrived at the Hinsdale office. He saw smoke and went inside to assess what was happening. He tried to call the fire department both from inside the building and from his car phone, but both were dead. He then flagged a passing motorist who finally notified the police department at 4:58 PM -- some 38 minutes after the technician in Springfield first learned of the fire. Fire fighters from Hinsdale and several nearby communities fought the fire for over two hours. They finally got it extinquished at 7:15 PM after they were able to cut power to the building. They might have been able to put the fire out sooner if Bell had installed a simpler system to cut power, the report said. During the fire fighting effort, fumes from burning batteries in the building required the evacuation of several residences within a two block area of the central office. Firemen had to work for a few minutes inside, then come out and be completely doused with a solution designed to protect them from skin irritation. After the fire was extinquished, employees were not permitted to enter the building for several hours, until about 4:30 AM Monday morning, due to the noxious fumes which had built up inside which had to be vented from the building. The first order of business was to restore service to Ohare International Airport and the Federal Aviation Administration. Circuits between the control tower at Ohare and the FAA flight center in Aurora, Illinois were routed through Hinsdale. From Sunday afternoon through mid-day Monday, communications between the control tower, the FAA and aircraft in flight were in chaos. Make-shift circuits were wired up as soon as Bell employees were able to clear through the rubble and get to this critical network. Hinsdale was totally without telephone service for two days. On May 10, limited service was given to area hospitals, police, fire and other government agencies. The following day, May 11, service was partially restored to about 12,000 Hinsdale residents. On May 20, partial service was restored to the remaining Hinsdale residents. May 23 brought the restoration of full service to 475,000 west suburban community residents and businesses. During the final week of May and the first week of June, full service was restored to Hinsdale. By mid June, most special services were again operating.
dts@cloud9.stratus.com (Daniel Senie) (03/21/89)
It's good to hear that Illinois Bell is setting up alternate routing and such, they still seem to not want to spend the money on sprinklers and Halon... Have they changed their position on this? -- Daniel Senie UUCP: harvard!ulowell!cloud9!dts Stratus Computer, Inc. ARPA: anvil!cloud9!dts@harvard.harvard.edu 55 Fairbanks Blvd. CSRV: 74176,1347 Marlboro, MA 01752 TEL.: 508 - 460 - 2686