Just to keep you up to speed, here is another update from Stan Matthews at the County…

Phone Service to Mainland Restored, but Capacity Limited
November 9, 2013

All San Juan County residents should be able to call and receive calls from the mainland and other islands via landline phone today, though there may be delays. CenturyLink warns that customers may have to try multiple times to get through when call volume is high.

911 emergency service via landline has been fully restored, but emergency responders warn that many cell phone calls may still not connect to 911 emergency response centers. In an emergency, dialing 911 on a landline should be the first priority with cell phone being used only as a back-up.

Overall, Cell phone service availability continues to vary by location and service provider.

In a Saturday morning conference call, Centurylink reported that its repair crews had a “temporary fix” in place providing about 20 percent of the telephone capacity the system had before an undersea cable broke early Tuesday morning.

Thanks to equipment made available by electric utility cooperative,OPALCO, approximately 60% of the pre-break bandwidth available for DSL Internet on San Juan Island has also been restored. (County-wide, Internet service outages have varied by island and provider.)

CenturyLink representatives said that additional temporary voice connections will be brought up in phases over the next two to three days increasing telephone and data carrying capacity to roughly two-thirds of normal.

They also said that barges and crews are staging to bring up the damaged cable up from nearly 300 feet below the surface of the Salish Sea so that it can be repaired. At this point, company representatives said, divers have not found the exact point of the break, but they have narrowed down the section where they believe the cable is kinked or broken. A full repair will take at least “a few days.”

CenturyLink has not ruled out the “worst case scenario” which would require a total replacement, rather than merely splicing in a new section of cable. The company said it is shopping for a 14,000 foot long undersea cable in case it is needed, but that it has not yet located one and it might have to be fabricated.

Nevertheless, by early next week, the company expects San Juan County residents and businesses to be able to conduct business as usual, though they may occasionally hear a “fast busy signal,” indicating that all circuits are busy, when dialing off-island at peak times.

Louis Prussack at Spring Street International School sends this invitation along…

If anyone needs free internet, feel free to drop by the porch at Spring Street School. All day on the weekends and after 3pm on the week days. We just set up a new wireless for the public called Free Wireless at SSIS. Our fiber is your fiber.

Best regards,
Louis Prussack, Head of School

*****

But wait, there’s more! Stan Matthews from the County sends over this invitation as well. Don’t you love it when a community pulls together like this?

San Juan County has opened a conference room in legislative building in Friday Harbor for use by citizens who have lost Internet connectivity due to the phone service outage.

Wireless Internet service and two computers have been set up for citizen use, along with an Internet phone which can call the mainland. Citizens are asked to make judicious use of the limited space and facilities during County Business Hours (8:30 a.m. Until 5 pm). The building is located on Second Avenue across the street from the County Courthouse. This space will also be available for public use Saturday (11/8) from 8:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. and volunteers from the County Council’s office and County Manager’s office will be available to assist users.

Many citizens have also been taking advantage of the Internet connectivity available at the San Juan Island Public Library.

I ran into Mike Greene from Rock Island Technology Solutions at the store yesterday and told him that I am getting a lot of people asking me why cell phones are not working because of a problem with a land line. He said that the Verizon tower here in Friday Harbor connects to… well you guessed it… the very same fiber optic cable that is causing all the trouble. So if you’ve noticed your cell phone (Verizon) works sometimes, but not always it’s because it is attempting to connect to the the cell tower on Mt. Constitution over on Orcas, and that tower cannot handle all the traffic from the county all at once – so sometimes you get a call through and sometimes not.

Texting on the other hand requires far less bandwidth, so most texts should go through sooner or later. As far as AT&T service, he wasn’t quite sure about how to answer that – if anyone reading this knows, please feel free to hit the comment button below and shed some light for all the rest of us technotards so we can hava understandings too. 😉

Mike did say that Verizon is on the ball, getting an additional dish set up on the tower near the Rock Island building, and another out at Roche (these are up now) and next they just need to put receiving dishes on the tower at Mt. Constitution, get them all aimed correctly and they should have much better service going forward. It wasn’t clear to me if this will be a temporary or permanent solution.

And finally the other thing he said was that they (Rock Island) have installed another repeater on 2nd Street so there is now great WiFi coverage on both Court Street and now over towards Key Bank. This is a free access point. And from what I hear, he has lots of bandwidth so should be a good signal.

Rock-on Mike and thanks for all you’re doing during these difficult times!

Rama Fire died in a moped accident November 2 on Maui. No one else was injured. Rama was an island resident from his birth until 1997, when he
moved to Seattle.

Survivors include his mom and dad, Jeannie Turner and Steve Schramm; brother, Leon Fire; half-sister, Emerald Fire; and large and loving extended families, including the Waldron families and the Mrowka families of Friday Harbor.

A memorial will be held at Circle 8 trails on November 16 at 2 pm. An island memorial will be held the following week. You can view or post tributes on the Facebook page Johnny Waycock.

Here’s the story from Stan Matthews:

Meeting in special session today, the San Juan County Council unanimously voted to declare “A State of Emergency within San Juan County, Washington.”

The declaration came on the fourth day since the failure of an underwater communications cable disrupted cell and landline telephone connections with the mainland. It is hoped that the declaration will enable public agencies to recover extraordinary costs incurred due to the outage and qualify local businesses for assistance.

The outage initially knocked out telephone communications between islands and to the mainland, including 911 emergency response lines and, though 911 service was restored Thursday, communications with the mainland remains limited.

The outage has interrupted other vital services that depend on Internet, cell or telephone service, including the Lifeline service used primarily by seniors and disabled persons. Continue Reading

11/7/13 @ 4:30 p.m. – Eastsound: CenturyLink has restored access to 911 and local inter-island phone services in San Juan County through a bypass created by splicing CenturyLink’s central office connection into OPALCO’s fiber and microwave repeaters. Internet services (DSL) are still down on San Juan Island; county-wide long distance (off island) phone service solutions are in progress.

CenturyLink reports that they continue to investigate the submarine cable failure, but weather conditions have made underwater exploration difficult. OPALCO and CenturyLink are jointly developing plans to meet the community’s needs if the CenturyLink cable repair or replacement will take more than a couple of weeks.

Kudos to the crews in the field working overnight as well as CenturyLink, public safety and OPALCO leadership who are working cooperatively to make best use of resources and coordinate quick action.

To report an outage, please call OPALCO’s outage line: 376-3599. If that doesn’t work, please call the Sheriff’s Dispatch at 378-4151. If it’s a true emergency, please call 911.

Updates will be posted on OPALCO’s website: www.opalco.com, as well as on Facebook (Orcas Power & Light Cooperative) and Twitter (@orcaspower). Please help us to spread the word for the sake of public safety.

OPALCO’s fiber service, through Island Network, delivers data communications capacity to public institutions as well as some commercial entities. There is currently a moratorium on new connections through Island Network as the Co-op goes through a comprehensive infrastructure design and review process.

Dana Lyons returns to Friday Harbor. He’ll play at the library Friday, Nov. 8 at 7 PM.

Here’s this month’s little bit of history, Part III in our series from the San Juan Historical Museum…

November reminds us of family traditions, like a Thanksgiving dish that must be on the table because “it was Grandma’s recipe and we’ve always had it.” Passed down family stories are often about food or our ancestors’ lives. In this undated photograph shared by the Chevalier family, we see family matriarch Mary Smith Chevalier (1878-1966). Mary was the daughter of Lucy Jack, a Native of the islands, and Royal Marine Robert Smith. Mary’s future husband, Ed Chevalier, wrote in his journal that he was mesmerized by her beauty when he first saw her on the shore of Stuart Island, her long black hair being brushed by an elderly woman.

Do you have an island story to share? To contribute to family files, please contact the San Juan Historical Museum. www.sjmuseum.org

Here’s the latest from CenturyLink:

CenturyLink crews restored 911 and local phone service between Lopez and San Juan Island last night at 11:59 P.M. 911 has been rerouted to the San Juan County Sheriff’s office in Friday Harbor. As of 4:00 P.M. this afternoon, CenturyLink crews have restored 911 and local phone service between Orcas and San Juan Island. 911 has been rerouted to the San Juan County Sheriff’s office in Friday Harbor as well.

CenturyLink and Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO) are continuing to work together to provide temporary solutions during the restoration of the underwater fiber optic cable.

San Juan County Phones Still Don’t Connect to Mainland
911 Service to Orcas Island Still Offline.

November 7, 2013

The San Juan County Sheriff’s Department has confirmed that 911 emergency dispatch service is again working for residents of Lopez and Shaw Islands, however residents of Orcas Island must still route emergency calls through the Orcas Fire Department.

An apparent failure in an underwater data cable at 4 a.m. on Tuesday disrupted communications between San Juan County and the mainland and between islands in the County itself.

For a time the break interrupted 911 emergency dispatch service on all but San Juan Island, the home of the County government. 911 service and interisland phone service has been restored to Lopez and Shaw Islands, however residents of the County’s second most populous island, Orcas, along with some smaller neighboring islands are being urged to route emergency calls through the Orcas Fire Department at (360) 376-2331.

Phone carrier Centurylink, the service provider responsible for the cable and services affected, has said that it hopes to have 911 and inter-island communications with Orcas restored today.

In a morning conference call, phone company representatives told San Juan County’s emergency responders that a temporary fix to restore communications with the mainland was in the works, but that it was not an easy fix and set no firm time frame.

Meanwhile, on San Juan Island, DSL Internet services, cell phone service, as well as telephone service to the mainland remain disrupted. Internet services remain available through some providers and is being offered at public libraries and at the main county government offices in Friday Harbor.

Stan Matthews
County Administration
San Juan County, WA
Voice: 360-370-7405

Kira at the Auditor’s Office sends over this note with another internet access option for you…

Hi there. I’m writing to let you know that the conference room next to the council chambers has been set up as a free internet/phone center. Anyone can come in and use the two computers that are set up there. Also, there are phones available to use, and people can also feel free to plug in their own laptops.

Thanks for getting the word out!!

Kira Sable
Recording Deputy
San Juan County Auditor
(360) 370-7550

CenturyLink is working with Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO) to provide a temporary solution that would restore local voice and 911 services for customers on San Juan Island, Orcas and Lopez. We will use OPALCO’s fiber cable and microwave system to connect our customers with service while we work to repair our severed cable.

A dive team is accessing the severed underwater fiber cable which is located about one mile offshore of Lopez Island. A decision will then be made whether to repair or replace the cable. We will release updates as we receive them.

Until services are restored please continue to use the following instruction in case of an emergency, residents on Lopez Island are instructed to use either their cell phones or their landlines to call Lopez Fire district at 360.468.2991 or go to the main station at 2228 Fisherman Bay Rd. in Lopez Village. Residents on Orcas Island should also use either their cell phones or landlines to call the Orcas Island Fire District at 360.376.2331 or go to the fire station located at 45 Lavender Lane, Eastsound.

From the Update mailbag:  One observant Update reader says “The InterNOT is working just as the name implies…”

Click for larger poster

Jane Cable sent this notice over to share with you:

Common Sense Alliance is putting on two informative forums this weekend. The first is on San Juan and it is repeated on Orcas the following day.

Click on the poster at right to enlarge.

Beth over at the SJI Library wants you to know they are open for business and they have internet as well….

The San Juan Island Library is a WiFi hotspot. Today we doubled our bandwith to serve islanders who otherwise would not have internet service. You can bring your own laptop or device to the library or you may use one of our computers. Library staff are on hand to help you make a reservation if the computers are busy, and wait times are not long. WiFi is also available in the library parking lot.

Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO) is working with CenturyLink to help resolve a county-wide service outage due to a submarine cable break on CenturyLink’s system. Service was disrupted early Tuesday, November 5th. OPALCO has a robust data communications infrastructure installed across the county to serve our electrical distribution system and is making those resources available to aid our fellow utility.

Cooperative work efforts are underway with a priority on phone and 911 service restoration. No estimates on service restoration are available at this time, but updates will be posted on OPALCO’s website: www.opalco.com, as well as on Facebook (Orcas Power & Light Cooperative) and Twitter (@orcaspower). Please help us to spread the word for the sake of public safety.

Until service is restored, OPALCO members should call the following numbers to report a power outage:

• Lopez & Shaw: 468-2991
• San Juan: 378-4151
• Orcas: 376-2331

In case of emergency, please use the following numbers to access 911:

• Lopez & Shaw: 468-2991
• San Juan: 911
• Orcas: 376-2331

OPALCO’s fiber service, through Island Network, delivers data communications capacity to public institutions as well as some commercial entities. There is currently a moratorium on new connections through Island Network as the Co-op goes through a comprehensive infrastructure design and review process.