Ski resort, retirement community among areas dealing with CenturyLink outages
UPDATE 5 p.m. Thursday: Service to all Tacoma customers has been restored, according to CenturyLink.
UPDATE 7 p.m. Wednesday: Service has been restored in the Crystal Mountain and Enumclaw areas, according to CenturyLink.
Original story below.
CenturyLink phone and internet service outages in North Tacoma, Crystal Mountain ski resort and Enumclaw have left residents without landlines and forced a retirement community to go on “fire watch.”
About 50 customers are affected in the Tacoma outage which began Friday, CenturyLink spokeswoman Kerry Zimmer said Wednesday.
The outage includes the 200-resident retirement community Franke Tobey Jones.
“The main effect on our campus is our independent residents,” said Bob Beckham, Frank Tobey Jones’ chief operating officer. “There’s certainly a lot of uneasiness. ‘What if I need to call 911?’ ”
Each residence has a pull cord for emergencies but that prompts an internal response, not a notification to 911, he said.
“I’ve gotten calls from family members, ‘Can you tell my mom to turn her cell phone on?’,” Beckham said.
In addition, communications between the community’s fire alarm system and Tacoma Fire Department is not working, he said.
That’s prompted a fire watch procedure, per fire department protocol, Beckham said.
“Our staff is working 24 hours a day, walking every single building on campus,” he said.
The fire suppression system is still working, he noted, including audible alarms and automatic sprinklers.
The problem was traced back to an equipment failure, Zimmer said. New equipment is being installed, she said.
“All of their services should be up by tomorrow,” Zimmer said Wednesday. “This shouldn’t happen in the future.”
Crystal Mountain
Approximately CenturyLink 500 voice and internet customers in Enumclaw and at Crystal Mountain also lost service on Friday when communication fibers were severed by downed power poles, landslides and flooding, Zimmer said.
“Persistent power outages, difficult terrain and road closures impacted safe access to the fiber cut location and our service restoration efforts,” Zimmer said.
Service was expected to be restored Wednesday evening, she said.
Calls to Crystal Mountain rang busy Wednesday.
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 4:52 PM.
