Flood wipes out circuit switch forcing a quick change

When Hurricane Rita roared out of the Gulf of Mexico in late September, it missed a direct hit on Houston, which was a worst-case scenario for many. Instead, Rita came ashore in a much less populated area just west of the Texas-Louisiana border. Good news for Houstonians, bad news for Delcambre Telephone, a 2100-access line carrier located just south of Lafayette, La., and very close to the gulf.

“The way Rita came in, from the Florida-to-Texas angle, pushed more water inland than the other hurricanes we've had,” said Matt LeBlanc, vice president of the telco. “It was a unique storm because of the flooding. All the previous ones haven't been this extreme.”

Indeed, in the 50 years since Delcambre began operating in the region, the telco has become accustomed to storms that cause wind damage, but Rita was unique. With the storm came a massive amount of water that started creeping up on Delcambre's central office and eventually poured into the facility.

“I tried sandbagging at first,” LeBlanc said. “We sandbagged about a foot and a half deep, but once it started coming through any opening, I said it was kind of fruitless.”

Before leaving the building, LeBlanc threw the electrical breaker to switch from commercial power to battery backup, knowing that some of his equipment was about to go under water. He also was able to move some carrier gear up a few feet to save it. Oddly enough, the building never lost commercial power, and some of the equipment survived relatively well despite taking on 3 feet of water and mud.

“I actually had some PairGain equipment that went under water. I fired it up a week later, and it worked and it's still running,” LeBlanc said.

The same, however, couldn't be said about the company's Siemens switch, which was destroyed. However, in one of those silver-lining moments, the damage also became the impetus for Delcambre to leapfrog into the IP age. Instead of replacing the Siemens unit with another circuit switch, the company opted to install a CopperCom softswitch. Working with Madison Group as a contracting partner, the vendor was able to install the switch and have it up and running within 10 days. The company also replaced its Lucent Technologies' Stinger DSLAM with an Occam platform, giving it a massive technology upgrade in a matter of two weeks.

CopperCom, which hadn't installed any equipment in the telco's network before the storm, also sent a truck filled with basic provisions like water, dried food and sanitary towelettes. The most challenging aspect, though, was getting there, said Tim Colby, senior vice president of marketing and sales for CopperCom.

“A lot of the area around it already was devastated [by Hurricane Katrina],” he said. “Rita just complicated the situation.”