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Rocky Mountain Power Fined $5,000 For Communications Disruptions

Building of lines of metallic and fiber optic cables construction of communication optical network connection. Laying underground tow cable. Excavation of trench by hand or mechanized excavator and installation.

(Gillette, Wyo.) It was a sunny day in July when Gillette and most of northeast Wyoming was suddenly thrown back into the 1950s. There was no cell service, no internet, and even landlines weren’t working properly.

In Gillette, the National High School Finals Rodeo was in full swing, and all around the Cam-Plex cell phones began beeping with warnings 911 service was down.

In fact, all communications were down.

At a Wyoming Public Service Commission hearing last month, Gillette Police Department Chief Jim Hloucal testified how the department had to carry out operations by relying on VHF radio and face-to-face visits.

“We virtually had no 911 service in our community for three hours,” Hloucal said.

Around 2 p.m., a gas line in Wright got cut. No one could get through to emergency responders to report the incident. One person drove over to a deputy’s house to get help. The deputy radioed dispatch services, who then sent officers to the office of the company that operated the pipeline to notify them about the leaking gas line.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, but it could have created a serious problem. Public Service Commission Chairman Bill Russell complimented the city and Campbell County’s emergency responders on their ingenuity in dealing with the communications outage in the face of the gas line break and other emergencies.

Hloucal commended the actions of “two outstanding” dispatchers who found a way to make it all work.

“They were a little frazzled by the end of it,” he said.

Even the Gillette-Campbell County Airport air traffic control operations were disrupted. Controllers lost communications with Denver Center, a part of air traffic control that directs aircraft flying between airports. The airline had to cancel some flights.

Since Verizon Communications are routed north through Montana, people on their system were still able to use their cell phones.

At the time, Jay Lundell, airport director, said one controller happened to have a Verizon cell phone, which allowed them to reconnect with Denver Center.

“It was a big, total mess,” Lundell said. “You try to put a dollar figure on it…it had to be devastating.”

Critical alarms

Dave Berry, operations manager for Advanced Communications Technologies, testified at the hearing on the series of events that led to the mishap.

At 10:35 a.m. that day, ACT received a number of “critical alarms.” Five minutes later, wholesale customers of the company began contacting them to report network outages.

“That indicated there were multiple fibers out,” Berry told the commissioners.

The company then set up communications with RT Communications, another major provider that utilizes the same network. By noon, they had determined the problem was occurring 11 miles north of the ACT office in downtown Casper.

Technicians were dispatched to drive the route of the fiber cable and determine where the problem was occurring. At about 1 p.m. the technicians found an augured hole off the Bar None exit.

There were no crews on the site of the hole at the time it was discovered, but all around it was the detritus of the conduit and fiber cable, Berry said. About one mile away from that hole, they found a Rocky Mountain Power Crew digging holes for utility poles.

Berry went on testify that a backhoe was brought in about 2:30 p.m. and technicians began performing a temporary splice of the fiber optic cable at 3:45, with the hopes of restoring 911 service. By about 6 p.m. all 911 service was restored, but crews worked until late to get the whole network up and running for ACT’s wholesale customers.

“I think it’s important to note no locates were brought in for the auger work that was performed at this location,” Berry said.

What happened?

Dave Eskelsen, media contact with Rocky Mountain Power, was not at the hearing, but explained the company was performing a power line relocation job for the Wyoming Department of Transportation.

The crews, Eskelsen explained, had got out of coordination with the locator service people marking the areas of underground fiber cables. Since there were some overhead utility lines overhead, the crew assumed wrongly there would be no underground cables at the location.

“It was our mistake,” Eskelsen said frankly.

Berry said at the hearing the crew knew they had cut an underground cable. When they called a “supervisor” to inform him or her that the damage had occurred, the supervisor told them to keep working.

No one at Rocky Mountain contacted One Call to report what had happened. As a result, the repairs were delayed by over two hours as technicians had to reduce what was causing the network failure.

“This could have been avoided,” Berry said.

Greg Hansen, construction manager with Rocky Mountain Power, confirmed in his testimony at the hearing that the procedures for underground cable location, as well as proper notification of damage, were not followed.

He explained a foreman had allowed crews to get ahead of the locator service crews, and then did not report the problem.

“That foreman no longer works for the company,” Hansen said.

The company has also implemented further training for crews on how to coordinate with locator services and report problems.

“This is not something Rocky Mountain Power takes lightly,” Hanson told the commissioners. “This is very serious. This is not how we operate.”

Berry said, ACT’s costs for temporary and permanent repairs to the cable were $16,000, but that does not include penalties its customers assessed ACT for the outage time. Those won’t be known fully until the end of the year.

Stephen Keefer, plant manager for RT Communications, said at the hearing its costs for the cable repairs were around $62,000. The company doesn’t have the same service agreements ACT does, so it won’t have further penalties to pay.

Eskelsen said Rocky Mountain Power was assuming liability to cover all the repair costs. The company was also fined $5,000 by the Wyoming Attorney General Office for the incident.

 

 

 

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