Service Due for Half of Customers Hit by Phone Fire
Full service should be restored by Friday to nearly half of the 35,000 customers whose phones went dead May 8 after a fire at an Illinois Bell Co. switching center, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The remaining customers hit by the outage won’t get full service until early June, spokeswoman Pat Montgomery said. Most customers have had limited service since Friday.
In Springfield, meanwhile, staff members of the Illinois Commerce Commission said a detailed investigation into the cause of the fire will start June 10.
“Hopefully, if we get people who know the business and are experienced in electrical type of fires, I would like to think that in a matter of weeks we should have something,” said Jerry Hoppe, the commission’s chief engineer.
Vital Hardware
On May 8, fire destroyed virtually all the vital hardware at the Illinois Bell switching center in Hinsdale, west of Chicago.
The outage has cost businesses untold amounts of money because of limited long-distance and local phone service, and localities were forced to spend thousands of dollars to bolster public safety since police and fire departments had no means of communication.
Hoppe said Illinois Bell cannot determine its liability to customers until the cause of the fire is determined.
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