Verizon vs. the Needham Fire Department

netbuzz writes "At issue is whether — or not — there was a minor fire in a house on Pine Grove Street in Needham, Mass., caused by a Verizon employee drilling through an electrical main. Everyone agrees that whatever happened — or didn't happen — was indeed the fault of the Verizon employee; it's "fire or no fire" that is at issue. Verizon says no fire, not even smoke. The Needham Fire Department begs to differ. New eye-witness reports are emerging ... and it's not looking good for Verizon."

I'm Sorry

[JamesRose]

Since when do you beleive a company that would get sued over the professional firefighters- it's just commmon sense, then you add the fact that people saw the damn thing. What's m ore interesting is the fact that verizon doesn't claim its not their fault- so they're accepting blame for something but not telling you what....?

Re:Headline?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Is this even worth being on Slashdot? Employee screws up, causes problems. International news?

I have to agree...interesting, but only marginally newsworthy.

Crap, several of our T1 lines were cut last week by a government employee who "forgot" to get a map of buried cables before digging. It cost us a heck of a lot more than a house (OT and moving of computer equipment from one location to another)... and that is just our business. I am not even sure it got local coverage.

Gotta love it when that happens. We just had a tree trimming company accidentally bring down the power lines about a week ago...we were completely dark for an entire day. There might be some good coming of it, though...as a result, the IT department may get to wire some leads into the emergency natural gas generator in the shop area. Once that's in place, we needn't be concerned with blackouts anymore. ^_^

Re:wow

[AskChopper]

Yep.. Happens a lot. Last year I was with a team trying to find a water pipe that was leaking when their JCB dug right through an electrical cable in the water filled hole. The resulting fireball singed the eyebrows off one of the guys who was leaning over the hole to look in. It left a whole Business Park without electricity. The employees loved it because they all got sent home. The companies themselves were less than pleased though!

Re:Blame

[Gordonjcp]

They don't. In the US, the electrical code allows for stuff that would have any sparky this side of the pond running for the hills.

Stupid semantics argument

[Spazmania]

Verizon guy shorts the home's electric main, it sparks like hell inside the wall leaving burns and smoke comes out of the meter where the fuse blew.

Argument that its a fire: things got burned.

Argument that its not a fire: apparantly no secondary ignition. The burns were evidently from the sparks and the fuse melting.

As for the fireman saying, "if there's flames..." It take a few minutes for the fire truck to arrive. If there were flames when they got there, they'd be substantial enough that there wouldn't be any argument over whether there was a fire. His claim of the existance of flames can't be based on primary observation by either him or his staff.

I can see why Verizon cares about the difference. If there was a fire, that's a compelling reason for the county to change the ordinances governing the certifications their installers are required to hold. If there were just some sparks with the protection on the electrical circuits preventing a fire as designed then there's no reason to change the ordinances.

DirecTV Story

[Se7enLC]

When I wanted to add a cable drop in my room, I opted to pay DirecTV to do the installation, thinking that they would bring a giant ladder and check to make sure that they ran the cable in an appropriate place. Things that I shouldn't be doing in a rental apartment. Oh no. Here's what they did:

• They took my personally-owned coax cable and cut the end off it. (I had a 50ft cable running to the jack in the other room as a temporary solution).
  
• Drilled a hole through the wall going outside without even pausing to consider what was in that wall
  
• Dropped the cable down the side of the house
  
• Realized it wasn't long enough and put a coupler on it and added another cable (don't they have SPOOLS OF CABLE on their truck?)
  
• Drilled a hole through the frame of the basement window
  
• Fed the cable haphazardly in to connect to the box.
  
• Attached the cable to the wall by putting a staple THROUGH the cable, trying to take it back out of the cable, giving up, cutting off the excess, and using another staple to go around it.
  

It was only a matter of time before one of these morons drilled through an electrical line.

As an experienced firefighter

[HangingChad]

There is no doubt when something is on fire. We deal with all kinds of incidents. We're a dirt poor volunteer department and even we have thermal cameras that will distinguish the merely hot from something on fire, even through walls. We also have infrared surface thermometers so we know where to cut the hole in the wall.

I've also seen it happen that something was smoking hot until the access hole is cut and when the air gets in it bursts into flame. Particularly in walls and behind panels. I doubt the Verizon techs were close enough to see when the fire department got there.

The witnesses said they saw white, puffy smoke. That usually means the fire is out. It also indicates there was a fire to put out.

Just amazes me that the truth is so hard for so many organizations these days.

Re:Stupid semantics argument

[dmpyron]

Friend's house got hit by lightning (not a FOAF). Her TV literally jumped off its stand and she had a hole in her roof and ceiling where it hit. Her neighbor immediately called 911 and the Round Rock FD was there in about 4 minutes. Six units, total. They used an infrared camera to check all of her walls for smoldering (or whatever firefighters call it). Spent three or four hours there, put a tarp on her roof and even called an electrician and the telco for her. The report listed it as "lightning strike and subsequent fire". Her battery powered smoke detector went off. The AC powered one had some problems with being smoked.

I consider any time the FD gets called out to a real emergency to be a fire. Flames or no.

Re:Headline?

[DeathPickle]

heh Seriously. When I was in college back in the early 90's, the company I interned for switched from thicknet ethernet over to twisted pair. (ahhhh the days of repairing a coax connector because the cleaning crew ran over the cable with the vacuum cleaner...) The rollout took several months, and my semester ended, so I went back to school for a semester and another intern (from a different school) came in. When I returned the following semester, I got my education in why it's important to label things clearly, accurately, and empirically. Some connections to the hub weren't labeled, and others were labeled uhhh interestingly. "Nice Lady in Accounting" was my favorite label. Anyway, to sort out where they each went to, we did just what the parent said. We unplugged the cable and waited for the phone. Took about 20 minutes. This was well before medium sized companies like this one had Internet connections, or it would have been much sooner.

Today this should NOT BE HAPPENING

[brunes69]

With today's technology IMO this is inexcuseable.

There is no reason that a city can't create a system such that the workers carry with them a GPS-enabled mapping device that can show them EXACTLY what is under them ANYWHERE.

In fact such a system should be federally mandated as mandatory. I hear way too many stories like this.

Re:wow

[digitalaudiorock]

I have a friend who's an electrician. One of his friends called him saying he was having all sorts of electrical outages around his house. When he went to check it out for him, he discovered that a cable TV installer (don't know what company) had drilled from outside directly into the back of the panel!! He apparently had just gone ahead drilling another hole a foot over and tip-toed away not saying a thing...miracle it didn't burn the place down.

Re:Headline?

[nine-times]

Throughout my career in IT, I've had countless problems with Verizon T1s. This is spanning about 8 years, between NY and DC.

I've actually called an ISP when a T1 went out and had them say, "That's funny, I have a record that Verizon just fixed a T1 on your street!" That's right, they broke my T1 while fixing another person's T1.

And now that I have a couple bonded T1s, I've seen it happen more directly. I've actually had problems with one T1, and right when it goes up, another goes down. Then I call back and ask them to fix it again, and bringing up the second one brings down the first one again. It's like they're children.

Right now I'm having a problem with errors on 2 totally different T1s, and the problem keeps getting bumped back and forth between my ISP and Verizon. My ISP does a complete test and says the circuit is showing errors, and then Verizon does a less comprehensive tests and says it's fine.

Re:DirecTV Story

[Pojut]

Somewhat interesting FiOS install story through Verizon at my parents house. These two fellas come out, great guys...I'm talking to them for a good hour or so before they start the work (due to the way our house is in relation to everything else, this was going to be a 5-7 hour job)

In the short 23 years I have been alive, I have never seen installers work with as much care as these two guys did. If they were going to drill walls, they put blankets over any objects near the drill sites, they COMPLETELY cleaned up after themselves, hid the outside cabling under the siding (it had to go up to the second story to enter the house where we wanted it to) They even came back themselves and repainted a small part where they had scraped a tool along one of the lower siding panels. All in all some real stand up guys.

Turns out that even though they work for Verizon as installers, they actually own their own install company...they apparently work for Verizon on the side "to help support our drinking habit"

Cool folks.

Cell site waivers and building damage

[Anonymous Coward]

A civil engineer friend told me he was called to inspect a leak in a multi-story downtown building. In the top floor mechanical area, he found a huge hole blasted in the concrete, and twisted metal wreckage of tension bars peeling up from it. The hole wasn't empty, though. It has a cell mast support in it. The building owner had leased space to a cell company, and they had drilled through the concrete, and in doing so had cut apart the sinews holding the building together. "It must have sounded like an explosion -- there's no way they could have not known they did this," he said. The owner checked his contract, and noticed he had signed away *all* right to sue for damages.

Re:wow

[compro01]

What, companies send their employees home if the building loses power?

only companies that don't have backup power. my office could go for about 2 weeks without the power grid, longer if we can get diesel delivered. we're the phone company and we have big-ass generators to run the phone systems and all the other office stuff.