Residents dispute Pac Bell's word

Residents say phones were not restored by Sunday, as telephone company said

Despite repeated assurances from Pacific Bell, at least a dozen Palo Alto and East Palo Alto residents said their phones were still not working late this week.

"Everything was restored by Sunday evening from last week's situation," said Lydia Bell, a Pac Bell spokeswoman.

That's the same story that Pac Bell gave on Monday morning, but according to some local residents, it wasn't true.

One Rhodes Drive resident called the Weekly to say that several families on his street were still without phone lines on Thursday. Many had been flooded in the meantime.

The outage occurred on Jan. 28 when Brooks Fiber Communications cut through a phone trunk containing 7,500 lines, 5,800 of which were active. Pac Bell made phone banks and cell phones available for emergency use.

Bell said the reported outages this week were flood-related, but added, "Pacific Bell's networks have been performing extremely well during the season's worst storms."

Bell said Pac Bell hired 350 additional service representatives this weekend to deal with storm-related problems.

--Elisabeth Traugott

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