May 8, 1988 - Hinsdale CO Fire [Telecom]
Neal McLain
20th anniversary of the Hinsdale, Illinois CO fire. Everybody on this
list probably has his/her own story about that day, but here's mine ...
from the Cable TV side.
In 1988, I was Manager of Tech Ops at the Warner Cable system in Oshkosh
(at the time, Warner itself was an independent company, post Warner-Amex
but pre Time-Warner). Our entire customer-record and billing system was
hosted by CableData, based in Sacramento. The connection between Oshkosh
and Sacramento was a leased line which, we quickly discovered, went
through the Hinsdale CO.
When I arrived at work that Monday morning, our office manager was
already trying to figure out what was wrong. I didn't know any more
about the situation than he did, but it was apparent that we weren't
getting any response from CableData.
We called CableData (which hadn't opened for the day), and talked to
somebody else who didn't know anything. But he did know that something
must be wrong because he'd already received other calls about a similar
problem.
By this time, it was obvious that we were indeed cut off from
Sacramento. After several phone calls to Sacramento and to Ameritech (or
Wisconsin Bell or whatever it was in 1988), we got reconnected. I have
no idea how they did it, but I recall thinking that the telco folks
worked pretty fast to get us connected.
Of course, our own cable TV customers weren't happy. Some folks just
couldn't swallow the idea that "the phone company" was responsible cable
TV customer service problems.
Neal McLain