UPDATE, 12:47 pm.: From the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

  On 3-8-2013, approximately 10:30 a.m. the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office was notified by the Plant Manager of Suddenlink, that an unknown suspect(s) cut the companies Fiber Optic Cable at approximately 12:17 a.m. today. Repair crews were immediately notified of an outage, and when they responded to the underground vault located near Grizzly Bluff Road and Blue Slide Road, Ferndale they discovered the line was intentionally cut and approximately 24 feet of Fiber Optic Cable was stolen. The damaged line caused approximately 1000 customers to lose telephone service including 911, along with internet and cable. 

Approximately two hours later service on another Suddenlink  Fiber Optic Cable was lost in the Trinidad area. When Suddenlink repair crews arrived at the location of the damage on Scenic Drive, Trinidad near the US 101 southbound onramp, they discovered that line had been cut. Approximately 950 customers were affected by the loss of that line.

There are no suspect(s) at this time. Estimated damage is over $10,000.00. Suddenlink is currently working to repair the damaged lines.

Anyone with information for the Sheriffs Office regarding this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Sheriffs Office at 707-445-7251 or the Sheriffs Office Crime Tip line at 707-268-2539.

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UPDATE, 11:08 a.m.: The T-S reports that today’s outage appears to be due to vandals cutting the company’s fiber-optic line in “multiple locations.”

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The outage struck LoCO HQ at about 8 a.m. Televisions blinked in and out; the Internet blinked out and stayed blinked. Once again, customers scattered throughout the region are reporting on the LoCO Facebook page. Some are affected, some aren’t. 

A call to Suddenlink tech support gives us this:

Welcome to Suddenlink. Thank you for choosing Suddenlink. We are currently investigating maintainence issues involving video, Internet and phone services in the Eureka area. We are aware of the issue, and we are working diligently to get it corrected as soon as possible. We do apologize for any inconvenience it may cause. Thank you and have a great day.

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