6,500 Lose Phone Service After Damage to Cables

EL TORO —  A work crew on Tuesday accidentally drilled into three underground telephone cables while installing a traffic signal, knocking out phone service to as many as 6,500 South County customers, Pacific Bell officials said.

A repair crew was expected to work through the night to excavate and fix the damaged cables. Pacific Bell spokeswoman Linda Bonniksen said that service would be restored gradually as individual lines are spliced together but that all affected telephone lines should be operating by 10 a.m. today.

Bonniksen said the cables serve 6,500 homes and businesses in El Toro, Mission Viejo and Laguna Hills, but the company would not know exactly how many of them were affected until the repair crew could inspect the torn cables.

“It’s an extremely difficult site for our excavation crew to do their (repair) work,” she said. “As of 5:30 p.m., they still had not reached the cables.”

Because the drill was believed to have cut some lines and not others within the cables, telephone service was interrupted only sporadically. “People on one side of the street have telephone service, while people on the other side of the street have their phones out.”

“Cable cuts are bad news,” Bonniksen said. “They are so hard to repair.”

Because of the high rate of development in the area, South County experiences cable breaks with some regularity, Bonniksen said. Each month, contractors installing roads, homes and businesses inadvertently damage 15 to 25 underground telephone or electrical cables.

“North County doesn’t even come near that,” Bonniksen said. “South County is a real hot bed of cable damage.”

The problem has become so troublesome that Underground Service Alert, a state-mandated nonprofit organization that monitors all underground work, will mail a brochure to contractors within two weeks.

Under a headline that reminds contractors to “Call Before You Dig--It’s the Law,” the three-page Underground Service Alert brochure outlines the law and warns contractors of their liability if they willfully or neglectfully cut into underground cables.

The contractor involved in Tuesday’s accident, Macadee Electrical Construction of Chino Hills, could face fines ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 if it is found to have been negligent. In addition, it could be charged the cost of repairing the damage.

The cables were cut Tuesday morning when a Macadee employee began drilling a hole in the street with a large auger, telephone company officials said. The firm is installing a four-way signal at the intersection of Jeronimo Road and Cherry Avenue.

“Every time those teeth (on the auger) came around, they would nick the wires and shoot water into them,” said Tom Belmont, foreman of the Pacific Bell repair crew.

“We mark the cables, but it depends on whether the contractor pays attention to it,” he added.

But Debbie McCarthy, who owns the electrical contracting company with her husband, John, said the company had notified authorities that it was going to begin cutting into the street and was following the markings left by the telephone company.

“It’s really pretty cut and dry,” she said. “Where the main discrepancy lies is that the markings were off by 22 inches. We have no way of knowing where the cables are. We go only by the marks.”

Times correspondent Frank Messina contributed to this report.