Bridge Construction Cuts Phone, Internet Service

April 30, 2015

Construction work on a temporary bridge on Highway 97 in Walnut Hill left thousands without phone or high speed internet service Wednesday.

Wednesday afternoon, a fiber optic cable was cut in the construction zone near Wiggins Lake Road, taking out service for Frontier Communications customers in the 327 and 587 exchanges, including Walnut Hill, Molino, Davisville, Dogwood Park and Bratt. Service was restored by about midnight.

As a precaution, Escambia Fire Rescue volunteers were one standby at the Walnut Hill and Molino fire stations during the outage — just in case someone with an emergency was unable to call 911 and instead called a local number for a fire station or drove up to report an emergency.

Comments

7 Responses to “Bridge Construction Cuts Phone, Internet Service”

  1. Football Mom on May 1st, 2015 11:50 am

    Calling 811 is a law. When you call you give them specific info on where you plan to dig. They have 48 hours to notify any utilities in that area the contractor will be digging. Now….it is up to the utility to locate the line and for all of you that seem to know a lot about this, Im sure that you dont need me to tell you sometime they miss locate lines, miss lines period OR just dont locate them at all.

    It happens….. A LOT.

    Im sure that the construction, utility, road, landscape crews that break lines are not always the ones at fault. I cant imagine they are digging and say “Hey, there is a big line that I feel like breaking and not only costing my company lots and lots of money but I will potentially be putting my life in danger. Yeah, that would be totally worth it so all these people cant have phone, fiber or whatever else.”

    Not saying it is NEVER the contractors fault, but just bringing perspective to folks who may not understand.

  2. Marilynn on May 1st, 2015 7:53 am

    They did the same thing at my house while putting in a water line for the new Poarch “warehouse” on Nokomis Rd, my phone and internet was off 2 days and they had not been notified about them cutting it , I had to call it in and have Frontier come find the problem

  3. Jane on May 1st, 2015 3:48 am

    Very strange. My phone worked, the internet was down. But my cell phone, which is AT&T, said emergency calls only….Hmmm…..

  4. no service on April 30th, 2015 1:32 pm

    Somebody needs to let Frontier Customer No Service know .when I called they said I was the only one to complain .

  5. Sam on April 30th, 2015 12:55 pm

    Wonder why frontier doesnt have a loop or ring to reroute calls?

  6. SHO-NUFF on April 30th, 2015 12:32 pm

    Underground utilities are supposed to be located before any excavation work is done. Its standard operating procedure in the construction industry. A fiber optic splice is expensive.
    Good thing it was not a Natural Gas line instead. Call 811 for a locate next time.

  7. Puddin on April 30th, 2015 10:09 am

    They did the same thing on the 97a bridge. Wish they would be just a bot more careful. But the bridge came out GREAT! :-D