We didn’t have internet, cell phone service, or long distance service from our landline Tuesday. They were out early in the day and didn’t get restored until about 1 a.m. yesterday. Construction workers had accidentally cut a crucial cable to town.
I knew from the last time the cable had been cut that the library had internet access, so I phoned them (a couple of times) to get more details. They have two connections to internet. One was completely down like the rest of town, but they also had RediNet, which was intermittent because so many people were trying to use it. One person thought the county government might have internet too. I was curious and someone answered at one of the numbers I called. She said the county didn’t have internet, but her personal phone did. It was AT&T but couldn’t say if everyone with AT&T would have it.
I figured the outage would also affect the credit card/debit systems at the local stores. We didn’t have to do any shopping then, but yesterday when Andy went someone said they had had to accept only cash.
Anyway, I couldn’t contact Andy while he was up at the land, and we figured out what to do if we had to evacuate this fire season and he was up there and the cable was down. I also asked him if he could shelter in place up there if a fire blocked his way out. Oops! We’re going to try to keep our defensible space around the house clear but his smoke masks are out of date, so he’s going to buy new ones. We don’t worry, but we do try to be prepared.
March 13, 2025
…you are a holdout with a landline.
What about having a CB radio or other low tech communication up the the land?
We are all so depend on Wi-fi and internet now and with fewer and fewer people like Musk controlling access to them—like he cut access in Ukraine when he didn’t agree with something a general was doing—we do need to think of alternatives.
Wow what a mess!!