LIHU‘E — Thousands of Kaua‘i and O‘ahu customers — including businesses and government offices, including the Kaua‘i Police Department — were affected by a fire on O‘ahu that knocked out phone and data service for an estimated 10,000 Hawaiian Telcom
LIHU‘E — Thousands of Kaua‘i and O‘ahu customers — including businesses and government offices, including the Kaua‘i Police Department — were affected by a fire on O‘ahu that knocked out phone and data service for an estimated 10,000 Hawaiian Telcom customers.
As of 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Hawaiian Telcom reported that continuing restoration efforts have resulted in a return of service to number of customers starting from early afternoon. Crews were expecting a full restoration by 8 p.m.
The suspicious fire, beneath the airport viaduct of the H-1 Freeway, burned spans of fiber optic cable, which cause the outages, Hawaiian Telcom officials said.
Services of other carriers with facilities in the area were also affected, so the total number of impacted customers is not yet known.
“It all depends on what kinds of services they use,” said Ann Nishida Fry, senior manager of Hawaiian Telcom Corporate Communications. “It also depends on how we are able to reroute and put that traffic on different circuits.”
When a fiber optic line goes down it takes a lot of customers out of service at one time, she said. The good news is that when a fiber optic line comes back up, it brings a lot of customers back up at one time.
Nishida Fry said that as one team continues to work repairing the damaged fiber optic cable, a second group is working in parallel on re-routing traffic through other circuits.
“There are redundancies built into the network,” Nishida Fry said. “It is a matter of what can work and then balancing that with the traffic on other circuits.”
It is not possible to say at this point when all service will be restored, Nishida Fry said. She said there are some large businesses that have come back up already on both islands.
The County of Kaua’i reported experiencing intermittent phone outages due to the technical issue with Hawaiian Telcom. The 911 emergency line was not affected, but the Kaua’i Police Department Police Dispatch line was down at 241-1711.
“It is critical that calls to 911 be limited to emergencies only and we truly appreciate the public’s patience and understanding during this time,” said Assistant Chief of the Patrol Services Bureau Ale Quibilan in a news release. “Our staff is working through a situation beyond our control and we are doing our very best to maintain a high level of service to the public as we work to resolve the issue.”
Wilcox Memorial Hospital spokesperson Katie Gallo said there were challenges encountered throughout the day, and most significantly was the loss of communication with the sister facilities on O‘ahu.
“This did not by any means impede our ability to help our patients,” Gallo said. “They remain the priority.”
The hospital disaster preparedness protocols went into effect. Gallo said the relatively minor inconvenience added up to a training experience for staff, who sharpened skills on procedures and functioned in a way reminiscent to the days prior to computers and Internet.
“We do have electronic medical records and there were problems accessing them,” she said. “We reverted back to paper record and actually had to write things down.”
Other businesses in Lihu‘e and Kapa‘a had trouble processing credit card orders, including McDonald’s, Costco and Jamba Juice.
Kapa‘a Big Save Store Director Mary Garcia said their Internet that was still down at 6 p.m., and that although customers could use their credit cards, they were unable to process EBT and debit card purchases. That alone caused havoc.
With the store system down, store staff were unable to transmit store inventory orders, log on to accounts or check official e-mails.
“The customers were returning everything when they couldn’t check out at the cashier,” Garcia said. “Losing customers and losing sales was the biggest problem today.”
The other two Big Save stores on-island, along with the sister Times store in Lihu‘e were also down, Garcia added.
According to cashier Laura Abadicio, the Fantastic Sams salon across the parking lot from Big Save also closed before the end of the normal business day.
She said that the stylists could not process customer credit cards and that business was affected so much that they just closed early.
Jamba Juice General Manager Derek Foley said the inability to process the cards was an inconvenience, but he said customers could get cash from the ATM inside the store that was still operating.
“We try to give our customers as many options that we can,” Foley added.
Tim Rothdeutsch, Specialty Sales Assistant Store Manager for The Home Depot, said they use a different system that includes a satellite link with corporate. They were able to process customer orders and purchases and did not experience any other problems.
The Garden Island also experienced intermittent phone problems.
TGI Information System Manager Richard Stein said that when the outage occurred he began to go through the motions of identifying whether the problem was an internal system or an external or global issue. But a check of a smart phone indicated that the problem was widespread.
Hawaiian Telcom’s Fry could not say exactly why Kaua‘i’s service was linked through O‘ahu. The Hawaiian Telcom personnel who could address the long-term technology issues, she said, are the same people who are involved in restoring service and were not available to comment.
• Tom LaVenture, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or tlaventure@thegardenisland.com.
