At
Broad Street, near the tip of Lower Manhattan, the situation is far
from normal. Many streets in the area are closed off and packed with
trucks, equipment, and generators. Manhole covers are open everywhere.
Verizon’s Broad Street central office, which routes local phone, DSL,
and FiOS data, resembles a military field base. Walls of sandbags remain
around the building, and the constant hum of generators and pumps
bounces down the streets. The lobby of the building is covered in
plywood to protect any decorations it may have, and the entrance has
become a type of checkpoint lit by a string of incandescent bulbs.
On Wednesday, two weeks after the storm, I met with Verizon's
Executive Director of Operations, Christopher D. Levendos, who showed me
the extent of the damage and repairs. Levendos tells me the 90,000
cubic foot cable vault has suffered a “catastrophic failure,” far worse
than the damage done to a similar, but much larger vault at Verizon’s
West Street headquarters near the World Trade Center.
I’m told that an estimated 100 people are working here — a collection
of contractors, power utility, and Verizon crews — and there seems to
be a realization of how much work is left to be completed. As Levendos
and I walk past the workers and squeeze between cables into the
underground vault, I don’t know what to expect.
A two-day pumping operation has left the cable vault mostly dry, but
it doesn’t look right. Cable insulation has been stripped back in areas,
cords are cut, chunks of cables lie on the ground, and splice boxes
have been torn open.
The 90,000 cubic foot cable vault has suffered a "catastrophic failure"
Levendos
explains to me that before crews could even begin removing water, they
needed to repair ground-level fuel pumps to feed backup diesel
generators on the upper floors. Two mobile generator trailers were
brought in, and they remained in use when I visited, as local power
utility Con Ed worked to reconnect the building to the grid. Workers
then used trucks to pump dry air through the copper wiring — a job
that’s typically handled by air pumps in the basement that were rendered
useless by the storm surge. It was too late for the decades-old copper
wiring, which was submerged for the better part of two days. After crews
sent test signals into the copper, Levendos says he was "left with the
conclusion here that much of what is around me has been destroyed."
Miles of copper is ruined not only in the cable vault at Broad
Street, but also at 20 or so manholes around the area. Even worse, paper
insulation in the copper wiring sucks water through the cabling from
capillary action, destroying cabling even in dry areas. Levendos says
it’s "far too tedious, time consuming, and not effective of a process to
try and put this infrastructure back together," so Verizon’s taking the
opportunity to rewire with fiber optics instead. Service has been
restored to FiOS customers for over a week — unlike copper, fiber optics
aren’t damaged by the water. As part of this process, crews have
already pulled fiber up the major corridors — including Water, Broad,
and Pearl Streets — to ultimately connect the fiber network to
buildings.
Despite the progress, huge challenges remain. While fiber optic
cabling weathered the storm, the electronics that send light through
them are vulnerable to water. Verizon has to analyze the extent of
damage done to equipment in buildings they serve and see how much work
remains to hook up areas without FiOS. Once fiber is brought to a
building’s doorstep, workers still must bring service to each and every
unit. Verizon wouldn’t give me a number, but thousands served by
copper-based phone and DSL remain without service to this day in Lower
Manhattan. For them, the wait will surely continue as the process of
bringing fiber up floor by floor progresses.
Credit : The Verge
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