An tried — and unsuccessful — copper theft in Van Nuys prompted a widespread web outage Sunday affecting swaths of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, a Spectrum spokesman confirmed to The Occasions.
“This morning, our strains had been reduce as a result of vandalism in Van Nuys that additionally affected our companies in different components of Los Angeles and Ventura,” stated spokesperson Dennis Johnson. In an replace on the corporate’s progress in restoring service, Johnson stated late Sunday afternoon that “technicians restored companies in Ventura this morning, and companies proceed to be restored this afternoon in Los Angeles.”
The incident Johnson attributed the incident to copper wire thieves — who had been on the lookout for copper in a spot the place there was none.
The corporate stated that a number of people reduce a number of fiber strains that had been on the poles, apparently climbing bushes to realize entry. The strains had been reduce someday after midnight.
Customers reported on social media that their web was out within the pre-dawn hours of Sunday and all through the day — with some voicing frustration over the disruption .
On X, consumer @strappyheels wished to know: “ on their invoice for the reason that outage has been ongoing since 2am and there’s no ETA?”
One other obvious buyer, expressed disbelief on social media at Spectrum’s posted rationalization citing “a felony act of vandalism.”
“There’s no method a single act of vandalism took out regional web for all of Ventura and Los Angles counties,” the consumer posted. “It is a critical outage spanning from Ventura, Ojai, Simi, The Valley, and apparently all the best way all the way down to Anaheim.”
However the outage was not common or as long-lasting for some. At 4:57 p.m., posted that her web within the San Fernando Valley was working.
Work to revive some areas was persevering with into the night, the corporate acknowledged.
The corporate has needed to make “1000’s” of fiber splices to restore the strains, a course of that’s time consuming, even with the assistance of additional crews that had been known as in, an organization assertion stated: “The fibers must be spliced within the strains to revive companies.”
In its assertion, Spectrum stated that the severing of wires has grow to be “a difficulty affecting the complete telecommunications trade, not simply Spectrum, largely because of the improve within the worth of valuable metals. These acts of vandalism aren’t solely a criminal offense, but in addition have an effect on our clients, native companies and probably emergency companies.”
The assertion famous: “Spectrum’s fiber strains don’t embody any copper.”
The corporate stated it was working with the Los Angeles Police Division in providing a reward of as much as $25,000 for info resulting in an arrest: “Anybody with info on this act of vandalism can contact Spectrum at (833) 404-TIPS or 8477 or attain out to native legislation enforcement.”
