Cable Operators Fight California Wildfires

Employees Evacuate Homes, Repair Damaged Plant

By Steve Donohue -- Multichannel News, 10/23/2007 2:01:00 PM

Facing the worst wildfires in years, cable operators in California are grappling with maintaining service to their subscribers while protecting their own homes at the same time.

More than one-third of the 800 employees that staff Time Warner Cable’s San Diego system have evacuated their homes since Monday, said vice president of public affairs Marc Farrar.

And Time Warner estimates that 2,000 to 3,000 homes of its customers have been damaged or destroyed by the fires.

“There are many houses that have been lost,” Farrar said, adding that Time Warner will need to rebuild plant in certain neighborhoods damaged by the fires.

Time Warner operated at minimal staffing levels on Monday and Tuesday, with only about 100 employees. Many employees evacuated their homes, and local authorities also blocked access to large parts of Time Warner’s service area, Farrar said.

While Time Warner canceled all field service appointments in San Diego Monday, the San Diego system directed customer service calls to other areas.

“Obviously if an employee has an evacuation notice and they have to respond to that, for them that’s their first priority,” said Farrar, who also evacuated his home Monday and is staying in a hotel.

Farrar said Time Warner hoped to return to full staffing levels on Wednesday, and that despite the fires, morale at the system remains strong.

“There’s an intense focus on making sure that we’re doing everything we can to get these customers back up and running in areas where the fire has moved through. Our employees are going neighborhood by neighborhood in areas where they are allowed to by police and assessing damage.”

Cox Communications is also taking a hit from the fires. Eight of the Cox’s 26 cable fiber nodes in San Diego were down Tuesday because of fire damage, said spokesman David Grabert. One of the system’s fiber rings has also been damaged, which shut down service to about 1,000 subscribers.

Cox counts 537,000 video subscribers and 2,300 employees in San Diego.

While some Cox employees have been forced to evacuate their homes, Grabert said Tuesday afternoon that no employees had lost their homes to the fires.

Cox is also sending employees to evacuation centers in San Diego to hand out blankets and to wire the centers with free telephone and Internet service, Grabert said.

Time Warner Cable’s Los Angeles division has also been impacted by the fires. Vice president of communications Patti Rockenwagner said the Los Angeles system was forced to close several of its retail stores on Monday in Santa Clarita, Canyon Country and Fillmore.

Some of Time Warner’s fiber plant has been damaged by the fires, but Rockenwagner said most of the outages Time Warner has seen have been caused by commercial power outages.

About one dozen of Time Warner’s employees in the Los Angeles region were forced to evacuate their homes, but most of them have been able to return home, Rockenwagner said.

“We’re all kind of in a wait and see mode, to see if it [fire] comes our way or goes another way,” she added.