There are at least of couple of possible responses to the latest great AT&T outage — the second in three months — during which thousands of people lost phone/Internet/TV services for nearly a day, and unknown hundreds of local businesses were unable to process credit/debit card transactions.

One sensible response would be to cancel all your AT&T services and sign up instead with a competitor, at least until AT&T starts offering its customers access to the redundant fiber-optic line that we all spent public money to build. Until the geniuses who brought us “U-Verse” open up their pocketbook a little, their customers are at the mercy of random saboteurs and whoopsie-daisy backhoe operators.

Another sensible response — and not a mutually exclusive one! — would be to tell your outage story to the County of Humboldt’s Office of Emergency Services, which is currently compiling a dossier about such things.

Check it out. From the County of Humboldt:

If you or your business was affected by Wednesday’s disruption in service from AT&T, please report it to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services (OES). You can submit a report online at the link below or by calling 707-441-3069. The survey will remain open until Friday, Dec. 18.

On Wednesday morning, a CalTrans work crew performing storm cleanup unintentionally severed a fiber optic line near between Fortuna and Rio Dell. The severed line resulted in many people losing service for the Internet and phone until Thursday. The Sheriff’s OES is looking for the following information related to this incident:

• Your name and the name of the business or facility that was affected
• Your contact information (address, phone number, email address)
• What services were disrupted
• The impact of the disruption of services, including estimated financial losses
• Any expenses you or the business incurred as a result of the service disruption.

There was no disaster declaration for this incident, so there is no direct line to submitting claims for potential funding or reimbursement. However, the information gathered may be used for various post-incident reports, future emergency planning and even legislative advocacy efforts.

Submit your report