A state agency is investigating last month’s widespread 9-1-1 outage and airport disruption in Santa Barbara County caused by a construction crew inadvertently severing a Frontier Communications fiber line.

Lash Construction workers on the City of Santa Barbara’s De la Vina Street bridge project accidentally cut the line around 8 a.m. July 22, and the countywide 9-1-1 system outage lasted about 22 hours. 

The Santa Barbara Airport had to stop flights because of technical issues at the Federal Aviation Administration tower. The outage also disrupted 9-1-1 phone lines and airport operations in neighboring San Luis Obispo County, more than 90 miles away from the construction site. 

Service was restored around 10 a.m. on July 23, after Frontier crews repaired the damage.

The state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety is now investigating the incident, City of Santa Barbara spokesman Bryan Latchford said, adding that the findings will become public once the investigation is done. 

The Underground Safety Board is investigating the circumstances that led to the regional power outage. The board oversees and enforces the state’s “Call Before You Dig Law,” and investigations focus on compliance with that law, spokesperson Sandy Cooney said. 

Last week, Santa Barbara County officials updated the Board of Supervisors on the impacts and aftermath of the outage. The Tuesday meeting was the first one held since the outage because of the board’s summer recess. 

“The city and county have conducted a joint meeting with Frontier, and an evaluation is currently underway to identify any additional choke points in the fiber network so redundancy can be established, with the goal to prevent any widespread system outages in the future,” Assistant County Executive Officer Wade Horton said. 

“This has been a real alarm bell,” board chair Laura Capps said. “I believe there’s a lot more robust conversations about redundancy and making sure this never happens again.” 

Damaged Fiber Line

The state investigation may look into how the fiber line cut happened in the first place. 

Frontier and city representatives say the fiber line location was identified, while Lash Construction representatives say it wasn’t. 

“We have a strong working relationship with the City of Santa Barbara and have always made sure our communication lines are properly registered and marked — just like we did in this situation,” Frontier spokeswoman Chrissy Murray said in a statement.

“We also take steps to keep all areas we serve with our critical communications network well maintained, and we make sure there’s backup in place in case something happens to our main lines, like vandalism or other damage.” 

On July 22, when the construction crew damaged the main line, Frontier was simultaneously having technical issues with its alternate route, according to Murray. 

“We’ve already fixed the backup route in the area to help prevent this kind of thing in the future, especially if there’s damage from a third party,” Murray said, adding that the company has shared detailed infrastructure maps with the city. 

Santa Barbara City Administrator Kelly McAdoo has said that the damaged fiber line “does appear to have been identified as part of the utility service alert program.”

Lash Construction representatives say the fiber line was not marked as a utility. 

“This line was never marked by the operators of this communication line,” project manager Matt Doyle said in a statement. 

The company previously said the line was not identified by the DigAlert system. Doyle later clarified that DigAlert is the call center to dispatch notifications and does not provide utility site services or markings.

“The location services need to be provided by a third party, like UtiliQuest, or performed by one of their own operators,” Doyle said. 

Handling 9-1-1 Calls with System Outage 

The county’s Sheriff’s Office dispatch center and Regional Fire Communications Center were affected by the 9-1-1 outage, along with most other dispatch centers. Dispatchers still found ways to answer emergency calls.

Agencies provided alternative phone numbers and advertised the text-to-9-1-1 system. 

Horton said dispatchers received 172 emergency contacts during the outage, and 98 of them were texts to 9-1-1. 

Many of the texts were from residents checking on the outage. 

“A large chunk of contacts that day were, ‘Are you really down?’ And the answer was, yes, but we’re still calling you, we’re still for you,” said Susan Farley, manager of the Sheriff’s Office dispatch center.

Dispatchers also used the Rapid SOS system to contact residents who called 9-1-1 but had their calls dropped because of the fiber line cut, she said. 

“The way 9-1-1 works, you call 9-1-1 from your cellphone, it hits a tower, the tower goes to a central office, the central office routes it to where it needs to be,” Farley explained. “As soon as it hit that central office, it died because of the fiber cut.” 

The Rapid SOS system captured the incoming phone numbers, though, so the dispatch center could call those numbers back, Farley said. 

“We continue to advertise that people call if you can, text if you can’t,” Farley told the county supervisors. Dispatchers answer more than 99% of 9-1-1 phone calls within 10 seconds, while text message responses take longer, she said. 

“The precise location is the most helpful information for us,” Farley said. “Occasionally, texts may be routed to the wrong agency, but we can transfer the details to the appropriate agency.”