By contrast with the major power problems currently in NYC and reminiscences of telecom disasters in the past, here's an account of a rather minor disaster that started last Tuesday evening on my street, when a brief but rather violent Tstorm went through. The immediate effect was that the power went out, because a transformer was knocked off the utility pole across the street and was dangling, with its wires (feeding my immediate area) strewn across the street. By the next day JCP&L, the power company, or the town had put up barriers and parked a truck (just a pickup, not a repair vehicle) in front. I still had phone service (VZ).
On Thursday, JCP&L arrived in force. However, when they cut down the transformer, the pole fell over, and the added wire tension also pulled down the pole outside my house: both old poles were rotted at the base. No phone now either, but a hell of a lot of wire on the lawn.
By about 3:00 Thu JCP&L had put in two new utility poles and I had power. Later that afternoon, VZ arrived and did the preliminary hookup to the new pole. The VZ guy bitched mildly that JCP&L had cut their wires.
Friday, VZ came back and completed their installation (wire to the house). Now had phone service (and the DSL still works). The cable company (Comcast) was around too and did some pole setup but didn't string the house wire. Maybe tomorrow.
I called all of these things to the various repair services just to get my name on the record. JCP&L had already reported the two downed poles to the others. What was interesting was the differences in trying to register the problem. JCP&L was right on the case. Comcast was easy to report to (but unlike the others hasn't finished yet). Verizon, however, uses an infuriating voice-recognition system that at the end tried three times to get me to make an appointment for a tech to come into my house with a possible cost of $91 if it wasn't their fault; all I wanted to say was "Your pole fell over. Your wires are lying on my lawn." When I finally got to the human, things went OK. Indeed VZ pulled into my driveway again just this afternoon to close out my trouble report.
And, as I say, 2/3 of the services were back in a reasonable time, given the storm disruptions in the NYC metro area over the past couple of weeks, including a tornado in Westchester Co.
Dennis