CenturyLink customers affected by a widespread phone outage still remain without working phone lines.
It has been more than a weeksince lines were damaged on May 19.
Crews continue to work to repair the outage, which originally affected 1,172 customers.
The outage, which was caused by a construction crew, is in the process of being fixed, but CenturyLink officials said it is a large undertaking and still have not provided a timeline for repairs to be completed.
Brian Dalessi, of CenturyLink, said extra crews have come from Portland to fix the problem, which he earlier referred to as a top priority.
“Unfortunately, it’s a really slow restoration process,” he said, adding that crews worked throughout Memorial Day weekend to fix the problem. “… Repairs are going on day and night,” he said.
Some phone lines have been restored, but Dalessi did not know if the vast majority still remain without service.
The construction crew bored through thousands of wires, including fiber optic lines. Dalessi said crews were splicing in the new lines, but besides the loss of the wires and cables themselves, the conduits were also destroyed and need to be replaced. Engineers and technicians remained on site Wednesday to resolve the problem.
The company originally had an optimistic deadline to fix the problem by the end of the day today, although it is unknown if that will be a possibility.
Along with residents and businesses in the area, the Centralia School District was affected by districtwide outages.
Updates on the outage are provided at CenturyLink’s Seattle Twitter page, @CenturyLinkSEA.
