Nothing disastrous happened in Cook County on January 26, 2010, the day fiber optic lines from Duluth went dead, disabling the 911 network and leaving the area cut off from customary modes of communication with the outside world. Qwest owns and maintains the fiber optic line that had melted underneath a manhole at 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue, the source of the outage, but in a March 15 letter to county commissioners, Qwest Minnesota/ North Dakota President John Stanoch threw the ball into the hands of the Duluth Steam Cooperative Association. In a March 17 phone interview with the Cook County News-
Herald,
Duluth Steam General Manager Jerry Pelofske threw it back.
On March 15, Stanoch sent a letter to Western National Mutual Insurance Company of Edina claiming that the outage was caused “by a combination of heat and steam from Duluth Steam facilities located within the same intersection.”
Stanock stated in his letter, “Qwest’s facilities experienced very high temperatures accompanied by high humidity. Duluth Steam experienced a low pressure leak in the same vicinity which may have contributed to the damage. Duluth Steam’s facilities are the only likely source that could have caused such high heat and humidity in Qwest’s facilities, and Duluth Steam is liable to Qwest….”
Stanoch said Qwest learned of the outage through electronic monitoring systems on January 24. Qwest responded by switching to a spare fiber within the same fiber optic cable. By Tuesday, January 26, more fibers had failed and service from there to the Canadian border was interrupted – for almost 16 hours in some cases.
Qwest brought in crews from Pine City and St. Cloud to help replace 2,200 feet of fiber optic line. “Upon arriving at the scene on January 26,” Stanoch wrote, “Qwest employees noted that the manhole was extremely warm and moist. Steam was shooting up through the manhole as well as a nearby Duluth Steam manhole.”
In his letter, Stanoch said the damaged fiber had been in place since 1987. “Thistype of outage is extremely unusual,” he wrote.
Representatives of Qwest and Duluth Steam met the next day. After that meeting, three Qwest employees found two Duluth Steam technicians at the site, one who said they were repairing a low pressure valve leak, according to Stanoch.
Qwest asked the fiber optic manufacturer to inspect the damaged cable. “The manufacturer’s representative concluded that the fiber damage was caused by exposure to steam exacerbated by heat,” Stanoch wrote.
“The visual inspection, the physical evidence, and the expert reports all establish that the Qwest fiber failed as a result of a combination of heat and steam that should not have been reasonably anticipated by Qwest, most likely over a period of time,” Stanoch wrote. “While discovery would be necessary to fully understand why such unusual heat and steam could occur in a manhole physically separated from Duluth Steam facilities located approximately ten feet away, there can be little doubt that Duluth Steam’s nearby facilities caused the failure. Qwest has identified no other source of such conditions. It is extremely unlikely that one exists.
“There can be no doubt that if Duluth Steam exposes physical facilities approximately 10 feet away to extreme heat and humidity, that the Duluth Steam plan has either failed in some fashion, been ” improperly maintained or has been poorly designed. As a minimum, Duluth Steam had an obligation to warn Qwest of the danger of such damage,” Stanoch continued.
Stanoch stated that Duluth Steam claimed to have sent Qwest a letter warning of the danger of installing fiber optic lines near the steam lines. He contended that Qwest’s lines are physically separate from Duluth Steam’s lines and that Qwest has no record of such a letter. “Qwest’s engineers would have considered such a communication extremely important and would have reviewed the issue had it been raised,” Stanoch wrote. “Even if Duluth Steam at one time sent such a letter, its failure to follow up with further communication constitutes negligence.”
Stanoch said Qwest continues to incur costs related to the event and is calculating the amount of damages associated with it. He sent a copy of his letter to Duluth Steam’s insurance company to both Lake and Cook County commissioners as well as to Senator Amy Klobuchar and some of her staff, U.S. Representative James Oberstar and some of his staff, and State Representative David Dill. Duluth Steam General Manager Jerry Pelofske said Stanoch did not send the letter to Duluth Steam. He received a copy of it from the Lake
County Chronicle,
which had also received the letter.
Pelofske said his office did find a copy of the letter Duluth Steam had written to Qwest in 1996, warning them of danger because of where they were placing their lines. “Back in 1996, they were informed of what they were doing at that intersection,” he said. “My assistant manager went up and witnessed the contractor for Qwest putting phone lines in unprotected over the steam line.”
Problems came up in 1997 and in 2000 because of Qwest lines that had been installed without insulation, Pelofske added.
“If you’re a utility and you’re doing work, you should make yourself aware of what else is happening on the street,” he said.
Duluth Steam provides seven to eight miles of high pressure steam, hot water, and chilled water to 225s building in downtown Duluth. According to Pelofske, those lines were installed in the 1940s.
Pelofske said he would be writing his own letter to Lake and Cook County commissioners.
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