CenturyLink said its crews have located both ends of a severed cable causing a network outage impacting the San Juan Islands and said the break may have been caused by an earthquake.
The fiber optic cable, located at a depth of 280 feet approximately 5,000 feet from Lopez Island, was suspended along a rock face south of where it was originally placed. The cause for the movement is unknown, but could have been caused by an earthquake that occurred just three minutes prior to CenturyLink’s first alarm notification.
“Typically a response effort of this magnitude takes over a month to develop; the fact that we were able to mobilize within the first 36 hours is amazing. Restoring service is a top priority for CenturyLink, and we have pulled resources in from across the country to get these facilities up and running,” said Tim Grigar, vice president and general manager of CenturyLink’s western Washington market.
The next steps will be assessing how far the damage goes within the fiber and positioning the barge for placing the anchors as early as late afternoon Tuesday. Once the barge is in place, splicing the new fiber to the severed lines will begin. Survey work has begun to identify where to lay the new cable.
The fiber optic cable between Lopez and San Juan islands failed just before 4am last Tuesday morning causing nearly all telephone and Internet connections to go dead.