A vandal or vandals cut a fiber optic cable and the resulting
service outage is causing major headaches for city residents,
businesses and emergency workers. AT
&
amp;T is offering a $100,000 reward for the arrest and
conviction of anyone involved.
Emergency workers scrambled to ensure public safety without 911 service and commerce ground to a cash-only crawl after a vandal severed critical AT&T fiber optic lines around 1 a.m. Thursday, delivering a technological sucker punch to the entire South County region.
The FBI and area police agencies did not report any serious injuries or crimes as of 6 p.m., about the same time most phone services began coming back online. But the suspect or suspects who apparently crawled down a manhole in south San Jose and slit four or five fiber optic cables, cutting voice and Internet services for more than 52,000 Verizon land line customers in Morgan Hill, Gilroy, San Martin and Santa Cruz County and knocking out cell service for untold thousands, remained at large. At&T – which owns the cables and leases them to Verizon as South County’s exclusive provider – also reported a severed line in San Carlos and has offered a $100,000 reward leading to the arrest and conviction of the saboteur.
Whoever did it brought credit card transactions to a near halt, crippling local banks, national retailers, pizza parlors and even thrift stores that lacked phone connections. Meanwhile, Gilroy High
