Oh *really*? That's interesting. I remember on September 11, it was impossible to get a call through to my folks down south to make sure they weren't panicking, either on my cell phone or the landline. And I was a fair distance from ground zero, in New Jersey at the time. The landline network most certainly didn't hold up. It was only after an hour of constantly hitting redial that the folks were able to get through to my cell phone (and yes, they were panicking).
And last summer during the big Northeast blackout, the local central office was providing dialtone, but any outgoing calls placed would get a busy signal, and incoming calls would be met with dead air. Turns out someone at Verizon did not properly hook up a portion of the wirecenter to backup power.
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.