that's frighteneing they were able to access the cables to begin with..i guess we take homeland security for granted...

Sounds like a disgruntled employee.

Police think it might be the Communication Workers of America (CWA), who work on those lines and had a labor contract with AT&T that expired on Saturday night.

Scary thing is it could happen again and it could happen anywhere in the US. It was weird to go a whole day unable to communicate with anyone. Think about it, what if it happened to you and yours.
Clare

Yikes!!!

Too much drama about nothing, IMO. You just described daily life 100 years ago, and people survived somehow.

But 100 years ago, that was the *norm.* So of course people survived anyhow.

Today, no phone service or internet has a huge wide-spread effect and is truely a critical situation. If it had happened in my location, while I'm home on vacation, no internet or phone is an inconvenience. But if my son had had an accident yesterday while cutting up concrete with the power saw, it would have been more than an inconvenience. It would have been life-or-death. And as the story stated, from stores being able to do business, clear up to communications between emergency responders, there's much bigger picture to look at. My husband has said for quite some time, that those wanting to harm the U.S. could do this very thing, at strategic locations across the country, and cause huge catastrophies.

I hope they do catch the person(s) responsible, and press charges on a national level.

here in FL it's the norm all hurricane season but even worse we lose all power and gas lines too lol. you just get used to it. the worst was when we went 24 days w/o power, gas & cable in 2004 almost lost water/toilet towards the end. since then it's not unusual for cable/internet to go out for a day or power for 8-12 hrs during our intense evening storms from may-oct. we have every thing you could imagine to help during those times except an automatic stand-by generator. power goes out for more than 3-4 days again and i will get one :-) ~ liz

A lot of people have their power/phone/water/fuel/etc interrupted for varying lengths of time. BUT to me this IS different. On one side you have nature or accident. This was a deliberate malicious act that adds another dimension. Believe me, I feel sorry for anyone who has to do without power for any length of time.

Shirley

I had internet connection and cable TV, but no cell phone (Verizon) or land line (ATT) connections -- those were affected due to the specific cables that were cut.

It was a very serious issue as it brought down 911 calls for a large area. Hospitals had to set up special communication plans to reach doctors -- physically going to relate messages them! My neighbor is a ham radio operator, and he was on standby all day to relate messages for other services. General advice was that if you needed 911, get yourself to a fire or sheriff station. Not easily done if you are 6 miles from the nearest station.

In the past, we've lost cellular connections -- no worries, use the land lines. If the power goes out -- no worries, use an older model low voltage phone that works on phone line voltage. But to have BOTH go out at the same time is truly worrisome.

I may move one of my landlines to Comcast since it was my Comcast lines that had no problems, probably by virtue of their cables being located elsewhere.

I saw that on the internet

take care another reason to get wind up flashlights and radios and maybe someday a windup phone/ So sorry you had to go thru it. I thought the lights went out too must have read it wrong.

I agree Chad. "When I was a child" story. We had the gas go out and it was really cold. We went down town where one store had a wood stove and stayed until we were bored out of our mind then went home. I remember being in bed with my sisters with our coats on just to stay warm and I remember a lot of laughing about it. We didn't have a phone until we moved to the big city and I paid for it when I was 16. Of course that was what they called the good ole days. One thing I know for sure if that happened today on a permanent basis, we would learn to get along with our neighbors and visit with each other a lot more. We would play board games, cards, etc.. We have lost a lot of that simply because husband and wives both work, no time to neighbor.

Problem is, star and chad, that today's society is set up around instant communication, not the everyday eb-and-flow of communication 100 years ago. It's the instant disruption of standard communication channels that was so problematic, that and the shut-down of all businesses that rely on electronic transfers, which these days is just about anything.

Of course people are resilient and would adapt quickly to a more sustained outage of any kind. I live in an area that was hard hit by the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, and we all adapted quickly to the problems at hand. One of the main problems is that we had no communication to the outside world for almost 10 days. The rest of the world knew more about our situation than we did. We just did what we needed to do to get thru it all -- no power, no water, no gas/propane (other than camp stoves), little or no phones for 10 days.

I remember when the squirrel in Ohio blacked out the power from that point to the east coast. My son in New York City finally got through to us in California that night with the news that he was in a park in the city and parties were going on everywhere, but they did not have any information as to what caused it or where or when it would be over. I was able to tell him that Ohio and east was blacked out. He was amazed. It took several days to get the power back on, and by then everyone's cell phones were dead. He was able to reach me a couple of times for news, but all the cell phones seemed to have problems, and so it was a fluke he was able to ever reach us.

Sign my name to mtnwomanbc's posts. I lived through the Loma Prieta earthquake too. I know what it is like to be without power, water, phone for a long time. It is very scary.

This isn't 100 years ago. And do any of you really want to go back to that time period? Honestly?

The point I was trying to get across was on how dependent we have become on our communication systems, whether it is cell phones or land lines or the internet. You feel lost and isolated without them.

Not to mention, but way up here in the mts where I live we would be in deep trouble if something happened and I couldn't call the fire dept. or the police. If I had to drive to the nearest police or fire station, my house would have burned down by the time I got there or I could be dead from a heart attack.

We count on the phone to call for quick help when we need it. I felt very vulnerable yesterday. Especially since one of my neighbors had a big illegal burn going on. I kept imagining all the woods going up in flames and not able to reach the fire dept. in time. I lived through last summer's scary fires where thousands of acres were burned. They came too close for comfort.
Clare

I'm sorry you had to deal with this, Clare, and mountainwomanbc. Clare, will you consider ratting on your neighbor? I find it atrocious that he (most likely) would do such a thing. I think if I could do so anonymously, I would.

Folks who comment that 100 years ago people got by without the means of communication that we have today, forget that 100 years ago they had other methods in place -- a siren that would signal an emergency, etc. There were ways to "get the word out" that emergency assistance was needed somewhere.

If you are ever in an area that loses phone service -- remember that hospitals, police and fire stations, etc., are the first to be brought back online. Public pay telephones are also high priority to be brought back online (although they're getting more and more difficult to find). Individual residences are low priority in an emergency.

Had I been worried about a nearby neighbour's fire maybe getting out of control and causing a mess of trouble ...

... I'd have been (gas/diesel-fired) truckin' off to the nearest fire station, pronto!

Diesel-fired firetrucks can travel (but are there hydrants? With water available from 'em?).

ole joyfoul

P.S. Due to the many aspects of our vulnerability, I think that a lot of the huge amounts spent on homeland security in recent years was mostly window-dressing.

That it would have been much better spent in helping people in disadvantaged lands get on their feet, building our reputation for compassion - and making it far more difficult for Al Qaeda and similar agencies to recruit new foot-soldiers: you don't see Osama flying those planes or wearing bomb-belts on the subways, himself.

o j

Scary thing is it could happen again and it could happen anywhere in the US

You may be too young to remember that "it" has happened before...in the late 80's or very early 90's.
There was a fire in AT&T's main hub (which connected east coast lines to west coast) near Chicago...fiber optic lines literally melted.
The Chicago Mercantile, and other business could communicating only via cell phones for days.
Critical lines were rerouted through Canadian trunks, business lines were restored within a week, and many residential customers were weeks before they had land line services.