Doug, > Was this story I was told based on fact? > Did a CO really burn down in Chicago?
Yes, in Hinsdale (a suburb of Chicago), sometime near the end of the 1980s. It was on a Sunday (Mother's Day, actually), and it was an "unmanned" CO. Unfortunately for Ameritech, it was a major concentration point for long haul fiber optic connections, so when it burned, they lost not only local service but a lot of connectivity with the rest of the world. I worked for GTE at the time, and we couldn't reach our offices in Northlake (another suburb of Chicago). We ended up putting a microwave link on the building roof. It was months before everything was back to normal. There have been other major CO fires in both Bell & GTE territory -- another well known one was in New York City back in the mid-1970's. Bell brought in crews from several states, and replaced the entire switch and MDF (Main Distribution Frame) in only 30 days! Western Electric also had a switch and MDF that was "staged" and ready to ship to another location, and they shunted it to New York City instead. (I suspect that such a recovery couldn't be done as quickly today, with the Bell System all broken up like it is now. Bell produced a movie about this CO fire and their recovery efforts, IIRC (If I Recall Correctly) it was called something like "Miracle on 7th Street," a take-off on the Christmas movie called "Miracle on 34th Street." ________________________________________________________________ John Combs, Senior Project Engineer, ITS/TestMark Laboratories Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.testmark.com
