Hardware failure was the cause for two separate power disruptions on Friday (10-14-16). (Photo by Ed Schoenfeld)
Sitka experienced a few outages this weekend that severed power and Internet access.
The first happened on Friday (10-14-16) at 10 a.m. AT&T operates two cell towers in Sitka and the 4G tower, located on Japonski Island near SEARCH hospital went down. IT personnel traced the issue to a broken piece of hardware. A replacement part is on it’s way and customers could see service fully restored today (10-17-16).
Marie Fervito, AT&T’s store manager in Sitka, apologizes for the inconvenience and says if customers would like to be reimbursed for the loss of service, credits can be added to their bill. To do so, call AT&T’s customer service at 1-800-331-0500.
GCI customers also experienced a brief drop in service on Friday at 10 a.m. A PC card in Angoon, which controls traffic in that circuit, went bad. According to Warren Russell, Vice President for GCI Southeast, traffic has been switched to a secondary circuit until the replacement PC card arrives. When it is replaced, which could be today, customes may experience a short blip in Internet service.
And on Sunday (10-16-16), Sitka’s electric service cut out from 11:35 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. along both Halibut Point and Sawmill Creek roads. The outage was traced to a protective relay trip on the Blue Lake Hydro turbine generator. Andy Eggen with the Sitka Electric Department said in an e-mail that no equipment was damaged and the cause of the trip is being investigated.
