Thousands lose service after cable damaged

While cable television and Internet subscribers usually experience a glitch in service during any major storm, many on the western side of St. Tammany Parish are still having problems, more than five days after Hurricane Gustav raced through the area.

Most of the trouble arises from a fiber-optic cable that was damaged sometime Monday in Lacombe, between Big Branch Marsh and Rapatel Street off U.S. Highway 190.

Owned by Charter Communications, the cable itself has since been repaired.

Brek Galatas, a technical operations manager with Charter’s Slidell office, said it’s unclear exactly how the cable was damaged.

“A lot of trees came down and wiped out the power lines, so they could have taken the cable with it,” said Galatas. “It also could have been a detached power line that burned the cable.”

Galatas said the network requires a redundancy ring around the area so that the signal can be back-fed through another cable plant if such a break occurs. After the break in Lacombe, it was routed to a plant in Folsom, but further complications ensued when that system was later struck by a tornado.

According to Nick Pavlis, the state director of governmental relations for Charter, technical crews have been working around the clock to assess the damage and to restore service.

Of the 224 operating areas, or “nodes” in St. Tammany, only 29 remained out of service as of Friday.

System-wide repairs are exacerbated by the fact that many customers still don’t have power.

“Our numbers get better as the power supply comes back,” said Pavlis. “Right now, I’d say about 65 percent of our customer base is up and running.”

All Charter offices will reopen on Monday, although they will not yet be able to respond to individual service calls.

The company is also asking customers who still need to report downed cable lines in their yard or in the street to call 1-800-438-2427.