City Hall phones go silent for a day

The Laguna Beach City Hall and police department were unusually quiet over the past day and a half because telephone service was down for nearly 24 hours.

The city’s website was also down. Emergency 911 service was operable, but some people were using “911” to call police because they couldn’t get through on the police non-emergency line, police records show.

A fiber network cable was severed on Tuesday afternoon by road workers using a concrete saw on Aliso Creek Road in Aliso Viejo, said Ayn Craciun of Cox Communications.

“We found out about it at 2:25 p.m. and restored service to all residential customers by 6 p.m. that day,” Craciun said.

But a large part of the network that serves Laguna Beach City Hall had to be restored, a job that took until 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Craciun said the problem arose because the network’s main fiber network had already been taken offline two weeks ago due to a similar road cut.

“Normally, that wouldn’t have happened because we have a backup,” Craciun said.

But the road workers on Aliso Creek Road had cut the backup fiber network line, while the main fiber network was still in the process of being restored.

Cox provides high-speed broadband services to the city, Craciun said.