Gilroy
– Pacific Gas
&
amp; Electric workers accidentally severed a buried fiber optic
cable Thursday afternoon at Las Animas and San Ysidro avenues.
Gilroy – Pacific Gas & Electric workers accidentally severed a buried fiber optic cable Thursday afternoon at Las Animas and San Ysidro avenues.
The slip cut phone and Internet service for roughly 12 hours to Saint Louise Regional Hospital and numerous stores in northeast Gilroy, including the Gilroy Premium Outlets.
The PG&E workers were digging a hole for a new power pole, replacing one broken just after midnight by an alleged drunk driver. Workers at the scene said the PG&E crew failed to call Underground Technologies Inc. before they dug to find out about underground cables. UTI is a private company that keeps track of the locations of buried cables.
“That was our mistake,” PG&E spokesman Jeff Smith said.
Saint Louise spokeswoman Vivian Smith said the lines there went dead sometime before lunch. Computer service was restored by 10pm and phones around midnight, she said. Internal phones and overhead pagers worked, and patient service continued unabated, she said.
“We were prepared because we’ve had drills before'” Smith said. Hospital officials issued each key department a cellular phone, notified emergency services and took the opportunity to test a private relay service it had hired for just such an occasion. Phone calls to the hospital were redirected to an out-of-state office where a live receptionist took messages and passed them to the hospital via cell phone.
It worked, Smith said.
At nearby Office Max Thursday afternoon, stocker Marcie Hernandez couldn’t process returns of merchandise or use the phone, but she said the outage hadn’t affected sales.
It did affect her personally, however, when she went to Quizno’s sub shop on her lunch break and found she couldn’t pay with her credit card. Credit and debit card machines at Office Max were still working, she said.
The crash that broke the power pole resulted in the arrest of Juan Rodriguez-Gonzalez, 21, of San Martin, for driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs – enhanced to a felony because an adult passenger was injured in the crash.
