A malfunctioning Verizon fiber optic cable disrupted telephone
service on Tuesday to a vast region of northcentral Pennsylvania,
cutting service to residential customers and a handful of 911
centers, including McKean County.

Crews from Verizon were still attempting to isolate the source
of the problem late Tuesday, according to Lee Gierczynski, the
company’s manager of media relations for western Pennsylvania and
West Virginia.

The disruptions – which began around 11:30 a.m. and lasted about
two hours before traffic was re-routed – ranged from McKean to
Clearfield counties and as far east as Tioga County, county
officials said.

Service had been restored to most customers as of Tuesday night,
however, McKean County Emergency Management Agency Director Steve
Nelson said county officials were still battling problems in the
Clermont area, where residents were without phone service.

Gierczynski said crews were looking at an area near Wilcox in
Elk County as a possible source of the problem. While there was no
immediate word on exactly how many customers were affected by the
problem, Gierczynski said customers were experiencing difficulty in
calling out or when they received calls, they couldn’t hear the
person on the other end.

Officials said the incident disrupted the ability for residents
to dial into the McKean County’s 911 Center for a very brief period
of time during the middle of the day.

“There is a fiber optic cable between DuBois and Warren that had
some trouble on it,” Gierczynski said, adding the problem affected
service for a couple of hours across the region. Gierczynski said
the company was able to re-route the traffic on the cable onto a
difference circuit while crews worked on discovering both the
source and site of the problem.

Earlier reports had indicated the cable might have been cut in
some fashion, however, Gierczynski said there are a number of
possibilities that could be blamed for the malfunction, including
the extremely cold weather the region has been experiencing over
the past few days.

“Fiber optic cable is made of glass strands and with extremely
cold weather like this they (strands) can break,” Gierczynski said.
“Fortunately, with the fiber optic cables, we can re-route traffic
like we did.”

In McKean County, Nelson said the problem caused a disruption in
service to the 911 Center in Smethport and affected long distance
telephone service.

“Nobody could dial into 911,” Nelson said. “They just received a
fast busy signal or there was just silence.”

After word of the malfunction, Nelson said backup plans were
initiated in which callers were re-routed into administrative lines
at the center; an additional plan was to use cell phones.

Nelson said county officials began to receive word of the
problem around 11:30 a.m., at which time officials began to do
testing to understand the depth of the problem.

Messages were sent out to various media outlets across the
county warning residents of intermittent problems with the 911
service and asking them to contact their local fire departments or
ambulance companies if they could not get through to the
center.

According to Nelson, officials tested the lines from all the
county’s phone exchanges to ensure everything was back in
service.

“There was an understanding that we would keep everything in
place in case something happened during the repair process,” Nelson
said. “That way, we wouldn’t have to set everything back up and
there would be minimal delay to the county residents.”

Nelson said there were no emergency calls reported during the
disruptions at the center. He also credited the cool heads of the
dispatchers and others at the center in following the right
procedures.

“Everything was handled properly and done well,” Nelson said.
“It was a pretty intense few hours when we didn’t know what was
going on. The staff at the 911 Center is very well trained and is
first and foremost in their field. They know what to do and do an
A1 job at it.

“They knew something was wrong and notified us (EMA). “It was a
very, very short time frame to get everything back up and
running.”

McKean County Administrator Richard Casey said he heard that
service was also affected in neighboring Potter and Elk counties.
Officials also heard the northern portion of Tioga County had been
affected.

“Everyone worked together to make sure public safety was not
compromised more than it had to be,” Casey said.

A dispatcher at the 911 Center in Ridgway said its operations
weren’t affected by the problems, but indicated that Clearfield
County experienced some difficulty.

The Tioga County 911 Center, which also covers Potter County,
could not immediately be reached on Tuesday afternoon.