hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> In Feb 1975 there was a very bad fire in a big Central Office building
> in New York City. Twelve local exchanges and numerous tandem switches
> were knocked out.
> The Bell System mobilized and worked around the clock to get service
> restored. Some burnt panel switchgear was removed and replaced with
> new ESS switches airlifted in. Other gear was cleaned one contact at
> a time with Q-Tips. Some calls were rerouted to other offices.
> Service was restored quickly and known as the "Miracle on Second
> Avenue".
> I wonder: Suppose a fire like that happened today: Would it take
> longer or shorter to restore service in today's world?
> On the plus side, I think ESS would make things a lot simpler. No
> contact cleaning, just replace the "boxes" with new ones. Some
> traffic could be rerouted as was done before by ESS reprogramming.
> Hopefully CO buildings today have non destructive (ie Halon) fire
> supression systems.
> But there are some negatives:
> Without the big Bell System in existence, could new "boxes" be found
> quickly and deployed? Western Electric had them ready (for another
> location). Do today's switch makers carry such inventory being
> they're very expensive?
> Secondly, New York Telephone brought in craftsmen from other
> companies. Could that happen today with staff size so much lower and
> the company fractured?
> Third, some work involved resplicing cables in the cable vault. Small
> space limited the number of people who could work at one time, despite
> laying plank catwalks to "double up". I think in a fire such splicing
> would still need to be done and take just as long, possibly longer if
> skilled crews weren't available (see above).
> Comments? (Public replies, please)
> P.S. A read of the New York Times of that incident disclosed the
> tenor of troubled NYC at that time. Merchants and residents without
> phones were more worried about security -- being able to call police
> -- than they were about lost business; that theme was repeated many
> times in interviews. Many businesses and people had burglar alarms
> that were now inoperative without a phone line.
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: February 27, 1975 was the date. And it
> was a very bad fire, with service out for a long time afterward. There
> have been other very severe fires in their history, in the summer of
> 1945 in the Chicago area, in one of the suburbs was one of the
> first. This Digest was not around at the time, nor at the time of the
> 1960's fire in Richmond, Indiana. However, Richmond, IN and New York
> City in 1975 are both reported in detail in our archives in the
> section on history. Then on Mother's Day, in May, 1988 was the major
> fire in Hinsdale, IL, which like New York City, took place on 'only'
> one building but affected a _large_ number of phones and exchanges and
> services in the Chicago area and throughout Illinois and Indiana. So
> telco tends to 'play the averages' on things like this, with fires or
> other disasters (New Orleans and Katrina for example) occuring about
> once every fifteen or twenty years. Although it is questionable if
> telco could have done very much to protect their property and services
> in the Katrina disaster, they most certainly could have mitigated
> their losses and the disruption in service in Manhattan in 1975 and
> again in Hinsdale in 1988.
> But in the case of Hinsdale at least, telco said at the time and still
> insists even today that it is not 'cost effective' for them to take
> steps in advance to mitigate their losses when these things
> happen. So, they do nothing about it, and deal with it when it
> happens. So, the difference between February, 1975 and February, 1965
> was ten years; May, 1988 was another thirteen years. Add twelve years
> for the cable fire in St. Louis in January, 1990, and about fifteen
> years for New Orleans and Katrina; although both New Orleans and St.
> Louis were not really anything telco could do 'much about'. So Lisa,
> it is not a question of 'if it happens again' so much as it is a
> question of 'when it happens again' as it will, I am sure, given the
> facts of life these days, with 'terrorists' all around us and your
> heroine, Ma Bell telling us she will deal with it if it happens, but
> it is not 'cost-effective' to worry about it before that time. She
> still says 'if'; most of us say 'when'. Don't worry, when it does and
> after it has been dealt with, Ma Bell will put out another very self-
> congratulatory book like they did in the summer of 1975 with a cover
> picture of a plume of thick, black smoke and a Brave, Couragous
> Fireman and tell us how They Knew What Was Best in getting service
> restored a month or two later. What they will not tell you until they
> get sued with their backs up against the wall will be as it was in
> Hinsdale: the first alarms went off in _Springfield, IL_ (about two
> hundred miles south of Chicago and were ignored by the on-duty staff
> for about an hour until _they_ decided to make inquiry from someone
> in the Chicago area. PAT]
Most of the companies have switches located in trailers that can be
moved to a site and spliced into the office cables. Also many of the
offices have a very good fire suppression systems that would stop a fire
very fast. I was involved in the 1971 Sylmar, Calif office, in fact I
was working that night in Sunland and we really felt it. Trailers were
brought in with switch boards and a construction center was set up in
Pacoma and the step equipment was cabled and moved to the Sylmar CO.
That was in the step days, things are much smaller today.
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