The Nation - News from June 3, 1988

The six Chicago suburbs that lost all or part of their telephone service in a May 8 switching station fire should have service restored by this weekend, officials said. About 35,000 Illinois Bell customers had their service disrupted when the station, which houses computerized equipment that connects local and long distance calls, was damaged in the blaze. About half of those customers were switched over to a new system last Friday. The costs of the outage could exceed $100 million, officials said, not only for businesses whose phone service was cut off, but also for local governments forced to pay for overtime and emergency equipment.