Democracy on the Front Lines
City Administrator’s Blog
Walter Denton
February 15, 2008
Did you know there was a fire this week in downtown O’Fallon? An electrical transformer at the Intertek office (behind O’Fallon Graphics at 2nd and Oak) caught fire on Wednesday morning around 10 a.m. The O’Fallon Fire Department quickly responded and the fire was put out with minimal structural damage.
But the story does not end there. Since Intertek is an Internet service provider, there was quite a bit of phone circuits at the site. When the transformer caught fire, it sent a high voltage power surge through the phone lines and fried the phone circuits within a two-block radius, including City Hall. The surge melted the phone lines coming into City Hall and City employees on the first floor could actually smell the phone wires melting in our circuit box.
Our phones instantly went dead on Wednesday morning and were out until around 12 noon on Thursday. AT&T had to replace the wires and circuits. If you tried to call City Hall or Public Works and could not get through, that’s why.
As you might expect, phones are essential to our business and we received several email inquiries from residents asking why they could not call us. We were at the mercy of AT&T and they eventually restored service.
On the other hand, there are some advantages to dead phones. City employees were able to work without being disrupted by phone calls so efficiency may have actually increased. In the end however, customer service was compromised and it affected our ability to provide services to our citizens.
Our phones are functional again so call us anytime!
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