Fire Causes Thousands of Verizon Customers To Lose Phone, Internet Service
Tewksbury Police Department, Wilmington Registry of Motor Vehicles among those impacted by Lawrence fire.
Thousands of Verizon customers across the Merrimack Valley lost phone and internet service Monday, when a fire in Lawrence destroyed a critical cable.
Both land lines and cell phone customers were impacted. As of 4:30 p.m., Verizon crews were still working to repair the damage. Service was being restored gradually across the region. There is no timetable for complete service restoration, according to company officials.
According to Tewksbury Police and published reports, the problems began when a mattress under a bridge in Lawrence caught fire early Monday morning. Before being extinguished, the fire burned through a nearby Verizon cable.
Communities impacted by the outages include Tewksbury, Andover, North Andover, Wilmington, Methuen, Lawrence, Littleton and North Reading.
Among those impacted was the Tewksbury Police Department, which was without phone service much of the day. By mid afternoon, TPD phone service was “hit or miss” and residents were being asked to call 911 with any Police Department needs.
The Registry of Motor Vehicles in Lawrence and Wilmington also experienced a loss of phone service and both closed for the day as a result.
sandy wentzell
8:06 am on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Did any resident lose their whole house set up....verizon phone , cable and internet? I lost mine and it is still down and they claim its my panel box and it needs to be replaced. It happened yesterday as well and I am wondering if it is associated with this? They are sending a guy out today to replace my panel box.... Only been a customer for 6 weeks and have had nothing but trouble with Verizon!!!
Rusty
9:07 am on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Get use to it!
Kelly
9:38 am on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Our internet went out today and we had it yesterday. We can call out to land line numbers but not to a cell phone number... :(
Shaun
10:05 am on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Our net,phone and cable stayed up fine the whole time. I wonder how it gets split through town since this happened in Lawrence and a good chunk of the town was out, but we stayed lit.
Bob
10:34 am on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
I have had Verizon FIOS since they came to town. Other than power outages, I have never had a major (more then 30 minute) outage. I never lost Internet yesterday.
Sandy - Probably just a bad piece of hardware. Happens sometime. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Bob
1:47 pm on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
I just got a "Code Red" to say the phones at TPD are back up! Is that what a code red is supposed to alert on?
TPD, it is not a toy! Please use it judiciously!
Comment
1:51 pm on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
I don't have a problem with a Code Red telling me that the phones are down for the emergency services. That makes sense.
Be grateful - Billerica sends them out a number of times a day from the DPW telling when water may be interrupted or when construction is going on at a school on a Sunday. I get code red's on my phone for a 5 mile radius from where I am at the time - I get them every time I drive through Billerica. THAT is a waste.
Bob
1:58 pm on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Comment - I too am OK with the down code red. This was to tell me they are back to normal operation.
Sarah
2:39 pm on Tuesday, August 28, 2012
The code red to tell people phones and stuff were down is a perfect situation for a code red I feel like, and the second was like the code red conclusion. Makes sense, glad it seemingly worked better than some of the "a lunatic escaped from the state hospital type" reverse 911's that random people seem to get but the ones who should don't. If the lunatic bit wasn't politically correct, sorry, but I don't actually know what to call the crazy/dangerous people in there.