Communications interrupted

A fire in an Eastern Washington University utility tunnel Monday evening knocked out communications to the entire city of Cheney, including the Police Department’s dispatch center.

As reported in a story on the Cheney Free Press website Monday evening, city officials were initially looking at rerouting emergency calls to the Police Department through a communications console at the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office dispatch center. Cheney and fiber optic communication contractor PowerCom crews were successful in restoring direct service for emergency and non-emergency calls to the department through a temporary fix by about 9:30 p.m., however the department was not able to access data from other agencies such as the Washington State Patrol.

All phone and Internet service to other city departments was down for the most part at press time on Tuesday. Communication was available via a cellphone in the Finance Department.

“We have internal operations, just nothing external,” Cheney Police’s director of communications, Cathy Munoz, said Tuesday morning. “We’re just not technologically up to date.”

Munoz said they were working on “work arounds” to get communications restored and hoped to have those in place by today (Thursday).

EWU’s associate vice president for facilities and planning, Shawn King, said the fire took place between 5:30 – 6 p.m. in a utility tunnel running under the sidewalk along Cedar Street in front of the university’s newest residence hall, snyamncut (pronounced: sin-yam-en-suit). King said a contractor was doing sidewalk replacement work there, but because the sidewalk also serves as a lid for the tunnel, instead of pouring cement it was necessary to install pre-cast slabs.

The contractor was in the process of cutting the old slabs when flying sparks apparently got into the existing insulation and fiber cable tray, which runs close to the lid, ignited and burned. King said the Cheney Fire Department responded quickly and extinguished the fire, but not before about 60 feet of cable tray and accompanying fiber optic lines was destroyed.

Besides Cheney, the fire knocked out fire and energy management system communications between Eastern’s Rozelle Plant and several university buildings. King said the systems in those buildings can be operated on a stand-alone basis as well as from the central Rozelle location, and that a temporary fix hooking them back up to the plant was expected by the end of Tuesday.

King said they hoped to have a temporary system working for Cheney by the end of the day Tuesday or Wednesday. If possible, he said they hoped crews would be able to make that fix through the tunnel system.

“If not, we’ll string it overhead on light poles,” King added.

Once the temporary fixes are in place and services restored, King said they would meet with the city and the contractor to assess the extent of the damage in the tunnel, which could include some high voltage electrical cables, and determine what permanent fix is needed and its cost. How long this would take could depend on what was damaged and how long it could take to receive replacement materials.

“We’re really in assessment mode right now,” King said.

While no time is opportune for such an event, Cheney’s Munoz said the loss of communications comes at one of the busiest times of the year for the city as EWU students returning for fall quarter begin contacting the city to have their utilities and other services hooked up.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].

MORE INFO

According to a text late Tuesday night from Police Chief John Hensley, Cheney’s 911 system and the city’s phone service had been restored. It was anticipated that Internet service would also be restored sometime Wednesday morning, Sept. 2.