Callers Put Record Load on Phone Nets

Although phone companies pleaded with their customers not to make unnecessary calls to the earthquake-stricken San Francisco Bay Area, worried friends and relatives on Wednesday put an unprecedented load on the nation’s long-distance system.

As a result, as many as seven out of 10 calls going into the area on AT&T; lines were blocked--yielding only a busy signal, a tape recording or an eerie silence.

AT&T;, which has two-thirds of the nation’s long-distance business, and its smaller competitors were limiting the calls they allowed to come into the area, so that those trying to call out would have a better chance of completing their calls. All but about 30% of AT&T;’s outgoing calls were successful, said James E. Nelson, director of network operations for AT&T;, which is based in New York City.

“That’s really the good news,” he added.

Still, telephoning from the 415, 408, 916, 707 and 209 area codes in Northern California took significantly more patience than usual. Pacific Bell, the company handling local service, reported that callers typically had to wait 60 to 90 seconds just to get a dial tone.

The quake had a particularly strong impact across the country because millions, tuning in for what they thought would be the World Series, actually witnessed the effects on live television. The resulting surge in calls to loved ones was a sort of electronic aftershock: AT&T; said it placed well over 40 million calls between 8 p.m. EDT Tuesday and midnight, which is more than double its normal volume.

On Wednesday, the telephoning continued. Nelson projected at midday that AT&T;’s daily total would reach 140 million long-distance calls nationally--a record he attributed to the 500,000 connections an hour coming out of the San Francisco area and the 700,000 an hour going in.

Similarly, MCI Communications Corp. spokesman John Houser said that system was seeing an increase of at least 300% in the number of people attempting to make calls. “A lot of people are getting blocked,” he added.

Al Butson, director of network operations for US Sprint, said his company was holding the number of incoming connections as close as possible to normal levels.

Officials at all the companies expressed relief that their facilities made it through the quake relatively unscathed.

In part, this resiliency reflected the improved technology and the lessons that the phone systems learned from the massive disruption experienced in the disastrous 1971 earthquake centered in Sylmar near Los Angeles.

Pacific Bell and other companies have also held regular drills to practice how they would handle such natural disasters.