Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 01:06:57 -0500
From: TELECOM Moderator <telecom@eecs.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: The March of the Telephone Trucks
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 318, Message 1 of 7

Last report on the flood. I get too depressed thinking about it. Although
Illinois Bell and the various LD carriers suffered no damage at all
from the flood, plenty of their downtown customers did, and phone
service in the affected area has been spotty. Conditions range from
constant busy signals due to lines shorted out in water to lines which
are operating but so thick with cross-talk its unbelievable. 

Dial tone is still slow arriving at times, but getting better. The
short span of time between going off hook (I'm talking about the
downtown COs now) and getting dial tone is when the cross-talk is the
worst. Go off hook, listen to at least two other people talking,
sometimes four!, and when dial tone arrives the cross-talk is gone. It
will all dry out eventually, they say. 

Places with key systems or PBX devices relying on electricity are
still out if the building is without electricity, but several more
places came back on line today. Others will be restored on Thursday
and Friday. The odd results obtained when dialing a downtown number
right now include (in a case where there is a Rolm PBX with a bunch of
DID lines) just dead silence when you call that exchange. A very odd
intercept message will be heard at 312-781-1000, the main switchboard
number for Marshall Field. By sometime Thursday it may be gone, so you
may not be able to hear it. After the three tones, a message says,
'due to the collapse of a retaining wall which caused a flood in
downtown Chicago, your call cannot be completed at this time; please
check news reports for when service will be restored.'

Carson's got one phone line up and running today. Their main number is
answered on a single line phone set up in the store somewhere. Both
stores will be closed until further notice.

About half the affected area was back to semi-normal today with
electrical service on, but the better places to eat lunch were still
closed down, and the places serving both pre-packaged food (potato
chips in bags, etc) and cooked food were selling that stuff but had
signs up saying 'only prepackaged food; no cooked food or beverage
until okayed by city inspector.' City inspectors are visiting all
these places before allowing them to resume food sales or beverages
made from water, etc. The McDonald's on Randolph will re-open on
Thursday per a sign in the window. 

Telephone trucks everywhere ... I saw at various places three huge
semi-trailer trucks with the Illinois Bell label on them and their
cables snaking up out of manhole covers. Snaking in the other
direction were large hoses -- the type the fire department uses --
pumping water out into the street sewers. There were several of these
pumping operations going on on just about every block downtown, all
being powered by portable generators set up in the street. Walking
down the street, you simply have to walk around large pools of water
splashing out from the buildings; make your way around and over the
fire hoses, the wooden barricades blocking the sidewalks and the
Edison and Bell crews with their holes in the street standing open.
There was a constant background noise from the sump pumps running,
some of which were quite loud, as were the temporary workers standing
around them.

ATMs are working except for those connected to phone wires otherwise
affected. But in a bit of cheerful news, more and more office lights
came on as the afternoon passed, and even Marshall Field, whose main
store still is standing dark with hoses snaking in and out of all the
doorways had lights on the upper floors. They apparently got enough
electricity and phone service into the building that the credit office
workers could resume their duties.

Other stores downtown with essential phone areas such as credit
approval and customer service (to handle their branch stores in the
area) have relocated elsewhere for the duration. Some, like Carsons
expect to have essential phones turned on Thursday morning, even if
the employees have to walk up eleven flights of stairs to get to the
office! 

On the subject of walking up the stairs, our ABC affiliate here,
Channel 7 is right in the middle of the disaster zone. They ran for
more than 48 hours on backup generators, and although most of the
employees simply stayed away, the engineering staff and the on-air
personnel kept coming in ...and they are on an upper floor in the
State/Lake Building.

Not only are the owners of sump-pump and hose companies getting rich
from this, so are the sign-makers. Most stores had signs up in the
window saying 'closed today', 'closed until further notice' or giving
directions to wherever they had relocated. The telephone repair crews
are making a huge amount of overtime pay, working as long as they
wish, along with their counterparts from Edison, and the patient
souls operating the City of Chicago Public Information and Inquiry
service at 312-744-4000. (That number was out of order for perhaps 9
hours between Monday and Tuesday; IBT ran special lines into City Hall
from the street so those lines could be answered at the rate of about
five hundred calls per hour). 

We expect the phones and electric to be entirely back to normal by the
weekend, but then we expected that back in 1988 in the Mother's Day
fire in Hinsdale, and it took a bit longer than anticipated.

Meanwhile the city fathers have admitted, 'yeah, well maybe we will
find a few dead people down there once the water receeds' ... just
maybe, mind you!'  <wink> ... 


Patrick Townson