Cable crash causes community chaos

Cable crash causes community chaos

Downed line knocks out lights, TV and Internet from Marion to West Memphis

news@theeveningtimes.com

Boom, boom, boom! Out go the lights… and the cable television… and the Internet.

For many West Memphis and Marion residents, what was expected to be a day of watching conference championship football games, ordering pizza and doing a little online shopping turned into an afternoon and evening of frustration.

An over-the-road trucker looking to catch some z’s caused all the calamity after pulling down a set of power lines Saturday in West Memphis. The northwest part of the city went dark about 10 a.m., from North Missouri Street down the I-40 Service Road and into the neighborhoods to the south.

West Memphis Electrical Superintendent Mike Downing recapped the incident.

“Early in the morning, an 18-wheeler was parked in the lot at Goodyear,” said Downing. “When the Goodyear staff came to work, they told him he had to leave because he had the lot blocked. When he went to leave, he swung under a low-hanging Comcast line and hooked it with his trailer.”

Two key power poles toppled after the big tug.

“When he drove out into the street, it brought two of our main line poles down,” said Downing. “It knocked out the northwest corner of town.”

Not only did a section of the city now have no lights, cable and Internet service into Marion was interrupted when the truck snagged the lines.

The boundaries for the power outage were mainly from Missouri Street down to Walmart, including Balfour and Dover.

“We had two broken poles that we had to replace,” said Downing. Breaker One was affected — we had to reroute some stuff and that’s what took so long.” The last place to have power restored was Goodyear and the neighboring

shopping strip to the

north.

“By 4:30 p.m. power was back on to everybody,” said Downing.

Although the power issue was resolved, the repairs only fixed half the problem. The Comcast poles also served as a hub for Internet and cable television into Marion. Cable was out well into the night on a Saturday featuring a full slate of college football conference championship games, including the regionally-significant SEC Championship and University of Memphis playing for the AAC Championship. The cable went down in Marion just as the Tigers were headed into double overtime.

A social media firestorm erupted when fans were cut off from the big games setting up the national championship match-ups. The outage also played havoc with businesses reliant upon Comcast for phone service and online transactions, such as credit card payments.

One such crippled enterprise was Pizza Pro. The 15-hour outage couldn’t have happened at a worse time according to owner Thomas Martin.

“On Saturday, the busiest day of the week, right before my rush is to begin with every conference championship on TV— how can you sell pizza with no Internet, no phones and no credit card lines?” Martin posted on Facebook.

Adding to the frustration was an ever-changing timetable for restoration of services.

“We were told it would be back at 3:00, then 5:00, then 7:00, then 8:00, then 5:00 a.m.,” said Martin.

Sure enough, Marion residents missed all the football championships but awakened to restored cable and Internet service Sunday morning.

By John Rech