ACS phone, Internet customers back online

JUNEAU - About 600 Juneau customers lost phone and Internet lines with Tuesday's power outages, and Alaska Communications Systems finished restoring the last of them Wednesday.

Around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, about 620 lines at the end of Fritz Cove Road and from Lena Point north to Amalga Harbor went down.

Phones and Internet went out because of power outages from heavy snow and fallen trees. Juneau received up to a foot of snow during the two-day storm.

Landlines and Internet were restored at Lena Point on Tuesday morning, said Paula Dobbyn, ACS spokeswoman.

From the Shrine of St. Therese to Amalga Harbor, 120 telephone lines, or 50 to 60 customers, were down until about 5 p.m. Wednesday. Snow had felled a tree that took down the phone line on the highway, Dobbyn said.

On Tuesday, Alaska Electric Light and Power Co., the electric utility, did not have an estimate of how many people were affected because the outages were so spread out.

There also were several isolated instances of outages throughout Juneau, which were being repaired as they were reported, Dobbyn said. These included short interruptions early Tuesday in the Mendenhall Valley, Auke Bay and Back Loop Road areas.

Wireless customers also experienced short interruptions between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Tuesday, as the wireless signal broadcast depends on power from AEL&P to operate.