California Cable TV Ops Restore Service as Evacuated Employees Return

Fires Destroy Hundreds of Homes of Charter, Time Warner Cable Subscribers

By Steve Donohue and Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 10/25/2007 1:43:00 PM

Cable operators in California said Thursday that many employees that had evacuated their homes because of the wildfires have returned, but that the homes of several hundred subscribers have been destroyed by the fires.

About 400 homes of Charter Communications subscribers in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., have been destroyed, said Craig Watson, vice president of Charter’s Western Division.

Although Lake Arrowhead residents were ordered to evacuate, many remained at their homes, including three Charter field technicians. The homes of the technicians were not damaged, Watson said.

The fires destroyed a Charter trunk line running up the mountain at Lake Arrowhead, knocking out video service. But by working with Time Warner Cable’s Los Angeles division, Charter was able to supply a basic-video package to Lake Arrowhead subscribers that remained at their homes by adding the video feed to an undamaged trunk line on one side of the mountain that delivers phone and Internet service, Watson said.

At Charter’s Malibu system, the fire in the area has been completely contained. While cable TV service hasn’t been knocked out in Malibu, Charter plans to replace trunk lines that have been damaged by heat.

“They [trunk lines] are still passing light, but we’re concerned about them. We’ll make a concerted effort tonight between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.” Watson said.

In San Diego, most employees that staff the Time Warner Cable system there were allowed to return to their homes late Wednesday, said vice president of public affairs Marc Farrar.

“We are back to just about full staff on board today [Thursday]. We were pretty close to that yesterday,” Farrar said. “In terms of CSRs [customer service representatives] and technicians in the field, we are trying to get back to normal operating conditions as much as we can.”

Time Warner estimates that about 300 homes of its customers in the San Diego are have been destroyed by the fires, Farrar said.

The biggest challenge in restoring cable TV service in areas where Time Warner customers have returned home is the availability of electricity service needed to power local Time Warner operations, Farrar said.

“San Diego Gas & Electricity is working to get that commercial power back up. And in areas where we need to, we’re going to set out temporary generators,” he added.

Only about five Time Warner employees who live in San Diego remain evacuated from their homes, Farrar said. “We have not learned of any employee homes that were victims of the fire,” he added.

Local authorities used a reverse 9/11 system this week to relay evacuation notices to residents in San Diego and other parts of California threatened by the fires. Time Warner offers digital phone service in San Diego, and successfully relayed reverse 9/11 calls, Farrar said.

Cox Communications media relations director David Grabert said Thursday that fewer than 1,000 of Cox’s 530,000 video customers in the region were affected by fire-related outages, but that about 90% of them had already been restored. He said Cox headquarters had unconfirmed reports that some employees had lost their homes, but even those employees forced to evacuate their homes had come to work Thursday.

“We’re doing like we do in crises,” Grabert said, noting Cox systems hit by hurricanes in recent years have helped the company prepare, practice and exercise emergency responses. “We take care of employees, we take care of our customers, then we reach out to our communities,” he said.

Some calls in the region were diverted to other call centers, due to high volumes, he said.