By Zach Pluhacek
The Lincoln Journal Star
LINCOLN, Neb. — After nearly 16 hours, Windstream was able to fully restore phone service at about 11:20 p.m. Thursday. The outage affected service to a large area of Lincoln and parts of Southeast Nebraska, including 911 service.
A major Windstream switch and its backup failed in Lincoln at 7:45 a.m. Thursday, disrupting service for about 36,000 voice customers, including Lincoln’s government, business and emergency centers.
Windstream had updated the switch and its backup eight hours earlier, said Brad Hedrick, vice president and general manager of Windstream in Nebraska.
Three other switches already had been updated and another was updated at the same time as the ones that failed, he said. There were no problems with those four switches.
“This is a pretty major issue for us and we’re working to resolve it,” he said Thursday morning.
By early Thursday afternoon, landline 911 service for Windstream customers in Lancaster County had been restored, said Julie Righter, 911 center communications manager.
While the service was down, authorities had provided five cell phone numbers for emergencies.
Anyone with a medical emergency who was able to drive or be driven to the nearest fire station was asked to do so. Ham radio operators were stationed at 12 key intersections until 11 p.m. Thursday to help relay emergency information.
“This is the first time I’ve seen this in my career, in 13 years,” Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said.
In rural Lancaster County, authorities had asked people who couldn’t reach 911 by landline to go to the nearest city office or volunteer fire department. Lancaster County Sheriff’s deputies were sent to rural fire stations.
Windstream spokesman David Avery said Lincoln has five switching stations - essentially geographical areas for transferring phone calls. People calling within the downtown station area were able to get through. Those calling from downtown to other switching station areas were getting busy signals.
The problem did not affect non-dial-up Internet service or most cell phone service, except that people trying to call landline phones in the affected area from cell phones could not get through, Hedrick said.
According to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, 911 service was out for all or part of Thursday in Butler, Seward, Saunders, Clay, Adams, northern Gage, Jefferson, Cass, Saline, Richardson and Fillmore counties, as well as Lancaster. Systems in Nuckolls, Thayer and Pawnee might also have been affected, HHS said.
The Public Service Commission, which typically gets a slew of calls when utilities or phones are disrupted, also lost landline phone service.
Gene Hand, director of the commission’s telecommunications department, said his office was still waiting Thursday afternoon to hear from Windstream about what caused the outage and how long it might last.
Contacted at home Thursday evening, Commissioner Tim Schram, who represents part of the rural area affected by the outage, said he was waiting for more details from Windstream.
“Once they give us a report of what the problem is ... we’ll analyze it once we have all the facts,” he said.
Depending on the cause and Windstream’s response, the commission could consider fining the company, Hand said.
“We’re particularly interested in the status of 911 service,” he said.
Despite the outage, Lincoln police were getting an average number of calls for service through their cell phone emergency system, Capt. Anthony Butler said Thursday afternoon.
But many business and government offices were frustratingly quiet throughout the day.
Dan Macke, owner of The Strand hair salon in the Haymarket, said his business hadn’t been able to take new appointments because of the outage. He was able to confirm previously scheduled appointments using cells.
“We’re not able to receive or call out. ... It’s just hard on a business that relies on its phone,” he said. “And it’s kind of in front of a busy weekend for us.”
Several businesses were also unable to use their credit card machines.
In an e-mail, Jill Schmidt of Geneva, owner of Jill’s Sweet Shop, said the outage “caused us a lot of grief today.”
“Not only were orders not coming in but people calling to check on Easter orders were not able to get through. I wonder if Windstream is going to give us a cut in our bill because of this April Fool’s joke.”
University of Nebraska-Lincoln spokeswoman Kelly Bartling said the outage caused “a flurry of activity this morning ... alerting campus that the common methods to dial 911 wouldn’t be working.”
The university sent out an advisory through its alert system, telling students and staff about the problem.
Sheriff Kevin Stukenholtz said Saunders County coped by using a dedicated cell phone number to its 911 center. The number was given out to fire departments, hospitals, care centers and local media so they could inform residents.
“Fortunately, we haven’t experienced any major problems,” Stukenholtz said, “but there may be something out there that we are not aware of, so I say that cautiously.”
Richardson County’s phone problems lasted only 10 to 20 minutes, said Falls City Police Chief John Caverzagie. The police department handles 911 calls for the county.
“Ours came right back up,” he said.
By 9:30 p.m., more than 13 hours after the outages started, Lancaster County dispatchers were getting used to their new system, second shift supervisor Kevin Campbell said.
“Things are actually going fairly well.”
Journal Star reporters Cory Matteson, Al Laukaitis and Matt Olberding contributed to this story.
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