Vandalized cables snarl communication, affect 911 service in Valley

Vandalized fiber-optic cables in San Joaquin County created hours of communication chaos in the Valley, including massive issues with emergency dispatching for public safety in Merced County.

The issue with 911 dispatch centers, first reported about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, was said to have been fixed by about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to AT&T spokesman Matthew Cross.

“We’re obviously taking this issue very, very seriously,” Cross said in a telephone interview. “It is affecting a number of systems, including Internet, television, wireless communication and cable.”

AT&T officials declined to comment on the number of customers affected by the outage, but acknowledged the issue was widespread in Central California.

Some 911 calls were getting through to emergency dispatchers Wednesday in Merced County, but some – possibly many – were not coming in correctly, authorities said.

“The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating a vandalism case, wherein multiple fiber-optic lines had been damaged in the area of S. McKinley Avenue, about a half mile north of French Camp Road in Stockton,” San Joaquin deputies said Wednesday afternoon in a news release. “AT&T discovered the damaged lines shortly after midnight.”

The damaged lines caused widespread outages in Merced, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.

“The effects are being felt in both hard lines as well as cellular networks. There has been some affected by the use of the 911 network system,” San Joaquin deputies said in the statement.

Law enforcement officials in Merced County said they were not aware of any specific public safety incidents that could have been compounded by the communication upheaval.

Technical difficulties plagued the Merced-area office of the California Highway Patrol, which handles emergency dispatch for more than five counties in the San Joaquin Valley, CHP Officer Moises Onsurez confirmed.

Mike North, Merced County spokesman, encouraged residents in need of medical, fire or law enforcement to call 911, and if they can’t get through to try the business phone number of the specific agency they are trying to reach.

Many Merced County residents calling 911 Wednesday morning from cellphones had their calls rerouted to various emergency dispatch centers in the Valley as issues continued to plague the troubled system, Onsurez said.

“People are still able to receive help, but when they call (911) from a cellphone they may be routed to Fresno, Stockton or Atwater and those agencies are passing the information on to us,” Onsurez said.

Onsurez said the issue was first reported at the Merced-area CHP office after 9 p.m. Tuesday.

Merced County sheriff’s Capt. BJ Jones said many of the most critical issues appeared to have been fixed by Wednesday afternoon, but added that other technical issues were still being worked out.

“I’d say, in terms of completely restoring the system, we appear to be most of the way there,” Jones said.

Officials in Merced County said they would work with AT&T and neighboring agencies in the coming days to find ways of preventing similar issues from recurring and of working on improving backup plans.

This story was originally published July 14, 2015 at 10:31 PM with the headline "Vandalized cables snarl communication, affect 911 service in Valley."