Telephone exchange fire cuts off communication

In one of the most severe outages in Australia in recent memory, a fire at the Warrnambool telephone exchange in southwest of the state of Victoria, caught fire early on Thursday affected 60,000 people over a wide area.

All Telstra services outside of Warrnambool from the towns of Lismore right through to Hamilton, Edenhope and Portland were out of action including landlines, internet connection and mobile phones including fire fighting paging services.

While the resources of amateur radio through WICEN (Vic) were put on alert, only minimal use was made of its emergency communication services before the official stand down order was received.

With no phone or internet access, businesses closed, trains were cancelled, firefighters had been unable to communicate, and some residents unable to contact the emergency services.

Mobile phones are being progressively restored, but it could be weeks before all of landlines are operating again.

Specialised equipment is to replace damaged components at the parent node for smaller exchanges throughout the region and experts in the field have arrived to restore services.

Jim Linton VK3PC
Chairman IARU Region 3 Disaster Communications Committee.

Source: http://www.southgatearc.org/news/november2012/telephone_exchange_fire_cuts_off_communication.htm

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