“We saw flames coming off of the wires,” said Hudson resident Zia Anger, describing this afternoon’s fire in the alley east of South 5th Street, between Warren and Union. The conflagration knocked out cable and internet to many Mid-Hudson subscribers, and to Verizon phone and internet clients in the southeastern reaches of the City.
According to another witness, the blaze began in a narrow gap between two garages on the south side of the alley, at least one of which appeared to be completely gutted. He told the officers investigating: “I bet some guy took his last puff of a cigarette and flicked it right between them.”
MHC’s Jim Reynolds surveys the scene
And indeed, a lone Verizon tech parked on Sixth Street said that his company would be unlikely to restore phone and web to its customers before tomorrow at the earliest. “The brass don’t want to pay us overtime,” he confessed, appearing as irritated as the two customers who had converged on his small van.
One 500 block businessperson stated that he had spent an hour on the phone with Verizon tech support, attempting to diagnose why his internet and phone had dropped out, before he independently heard about the fire. This observer had the identical experience of waiting through long hold (and interminable Muzak) as various customer service reps tried in vain to test the studio modem.
During one of those holds, a check of Facebook via a smartphone revealed the emergency in progress—of which Verizon’s central office appeared to be totally unaware. One rep actually claimed that this call was the only customer outage in all of Hudson, a claim readily disproven by a visit to the Hudson Community Board or a walk down the street.
Between ice storms, falling trees, fires, and wayward vehicles taking out telephone poles and wires, it seems far past time to either bury the rest of these cables—creating a nice employment boom locally. Or else use the top of Columbia Memorial Hospital to broadcast wi-fi citywide, with a repeater on top of Bliss Towers.
