Josh Blanchard, a Ballston resident, shared his letter with ARLnow.com.
Dear County Board of Arlington,
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Verizon
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A section of Columbia Pike closed in both directions for downed utility lines lying in the roadway.
The Pike closed to all traffic between S. Randolph Street and S. George Mason Drive, with police diverting cars onto side streets. A reader said the lines came down around 2:30 p.m. Thursday (July 15) at the intersection of Columbia Pike and S. George Mason Drive.
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Fairlington is the last neighborhood in Arlington to be wired for FiOS, according to Rob Billingsley, Arlington County’s Cable Administrator.
Under an agreement with Verizon enacted in June 2006, the company agreed to complete a county-wide implementation of FiOS service within 10 years. The initial service build-out took place mostly in north Arlington, before Verizon’s fiber optic lines were brought to other parts of the county during a second phase of the project.
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No Democrats to Run Against Van Doren — Nancy Van Doren is the lone Democrat to file to run for the Arlington School Board seat being vacated by Noah Simon. She’s expected to be confirmed as the Democratic endorsee on Aug. 6. [InsideNova]
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The problems include sporadic difficulty connecting to websites and connections that are crawling at dial-up speeds. The issues have been reported in south and north Arlington, as well as Falls Church and Vienna, said Alexander Chamandy of Arlington Virginia Computer Repair.
Update at 2:00 p.m. — Verizon says the issues have been resolved.
In the days following the storm, which left 1 million customers without power in Virginia, Arlington and Fairfax counties experienced numerous problems with its 911 service, which made 911 unreachable for many emergency callers; some callers got a busy signal after calling 911, others heard nothing.
The problems were traced back to Verizon’s local communications backbone. In a report released last week, Verizon said the 911 problems started as a result of power outages.
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The Dominion outage website showed around 100 customers without power as of 8:00 a.m., but those now appear to have been fixed.
Verizon, meanwhile, reports significant progress on restoring service to its TV, internet and phone customers who were affected by the June 29 storm. A Verizon spokesman said technicians worked extended shifts over the weekend and service levels are nearly back to a normal level today.
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As of 9:30 a.m. on Monday, 27,586 Dominion customers were still without power, down from 59,000 at noon on Saturday. The company says it has 4,200 employees and contractors working to restore power to customers in all affected areas, but notes that the huge scale of the damage is making restoration a multi-day process.
“Many poles and cross arms need to be replaced, and other infrastructure needs to be rebuilt,” Dominion said in a press release.
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The work has been on-going since late last night, after an underground cable was damaged by a contractor. Verizon says work in the intersection could continue through tomorrow morning.
“A contractor performing work to install traffic light control cables bored through one of our underground cables, affecting service for several hundred customers in the area,” said Verizon spokesman Harry J. Mitchell. “We will have to replace the damaged section of cable, and we’re preparing to do that. We hope to have all work done, and service restored to all customers, by 8:00 a.m. tomorrow (Oct. 7).”
Verizon technicians had to painstakingly splice back together thousands of copper lines in three large cables that were damaged by a contractor taking a soil sample in Rocky Run Park (1109 N. Barton St.). Hundreds of Verizon customers in the Clarendon and Courthouse area lost their phone and DSL internet service as a result of the cut cables.
As of 6:30 last night, service was restored to all customers, according to Verizon spokesman Harry Mitchell.
“Our restoral efforts continue,” Verizon spokesman Harry J. Mitchell told ARLnow.com this morning. “We’ve replaced and completed work on one of the damaged cables, and we’re at work on the second cable. We also found that a third cable was damaged, and we’ll be replacing a section of that one as well.”
The cables contain thousands of individual copper lines, which carry phone conversations and internet service to hundreds of Verizon customers in the area. Each copper line must be painstakingly spliced together to restore service. On Wednesday, Mitchell said employees were working around the clock to perform the repairs.