Copper thefts are partly responsible for the long outages of bomb cyclones

KING COUNTY, Wash. – During a special meeting of the King County Council on Wednesday, various agencies met to discuss the pros and cons of the storm response following the Nov. 19 bomb cyclone.

Concerns raised included the inability to communicate due to internet outages.

“We are very dependent on technology, sometimes to a degree that really concerns me,” said Brian Carson, Puget Sound regional fire chief.

Carson continued that crews relied on radios due to internet connection failures.

“We also lost Verizon services,” he said. “Mobile data computers in the drilling rigs that we can use are not available to us. We had no power, we had no internet out in the eastern battalions, so we really just had to rely on the radios.”

During Wednesday’s meeting, Comcast representative Terry Davis said the theft of copper cables has caused delays in restoring some phone lines and internet.

“We don’t see voters going out looking for wooden debris like we have in the past. Now they are turning to the old telephone lines to replace the twisted pair copper lines. The problem is that they are cutting our fiber optic lines at the same time,” Davis said. “Last year there were over 130 incidents of vandalism where our communications were disrupted. In this storm there were specifically seven. This will reduce the resources we provide to areas impacted by the storm.”

Comcast said it was conducting a review to find out what worked and what didn’t and said it would make changes as needed in the next storm response.

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