Chesterton Tribune

 

 

Severed cable the cause of phone troubles at Duneland Schools

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By KEVIN NEVERS

The “telecommunications break” which Duneland Schools parents have been receiving notifications about--asking them only to call their child’s school in an emergency--wasn’t so much a break, in fact, as it was a severing.

It happened on Wednesday morning, when a contractor digging a hole for a new sign at the Westchester Township History Museum, 700 W. Porter Ave.--formerly the Duneland Schools admin building--cut a Frontier phone cable serving the schools and bundling hundreds of separate strands, Assistant Superintendent Monte Moffett told the Chesterton Tribune.

As Moffett understands the incident, the contractor’s excavator did call 811 before turning dirt.

He just didn’t wait until a locate had been made, and hit the Frontier cable approximately two feet below the surface. Had he waited, the locator would’ve flagged not only the Frontier cable but a nearby NIPSCO line as well.

“He was very lucky,” Moffett noted.

The severed cable has affected neither the Duneland Schools’ Internet service nor its internal phone system. But it has bottlenecked external calls coming in.

Repairing the damage, in the meantime--each strand will have to be spliced “in the hole, by hand”--is proving more complicated than anyone initially expected, Moffett said. Because while Frontier was able to quick-fix a temporary bypass which returned normal phone service to the Duneland Schools, every time the severed cable was touched and the cut strands jostled, the bypass shorted out.

For the moment Frontier has stabilized the cable and may end up having to schedule a permanent repair outside school hours, when a renewed disruption in phone service won’t be noticed.

The sign contractor, Moffett added, is picking up the tab for repairs.

 

 

 

 

Posted 9/9/2016

 
 
 
 

 

 

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