Government : Vinton Municipal Communications Utility now deal with iVinton repairs

At the VMCU (Vinton Municipal Communications Utilities aka iVinton) board meeting on Tuesday evening, it was announced there will be some scheduled downtime to repair fiber cuts made during the new road construction. Services will be down from 10:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m. on May 24th and again on the 25th. One repair was already made on Monday night.

Originally, it was reported that iVinton had been cut twice during street repairs. In total, the new iVinton network of fiber was hit four different times with a total of 12 different fibers being cut during the road construction.

Dave Fridley, of Farr Technologies who was in charge of planning and designing the iVinton project spoke to the board concerning the damage done. He addressed the board telling them that after the first cut the road construction should have been shut down, by the contractor and if not by them, he believes that the city should have stopped the project until answers were found for why this had happened.

Instead, work continued and as a result, the lines were cut three additional times. Fridley said that this was a record for him. "It is the most cuts I have ever seen over that short of period of time in 40+ years in the business. 12 cuts in 9 days, plus it was primarily the mainline getting hit."

"We take great pride in putting together a working system," Fridley said. He explained that repairs that made were simply to restore service to the residents. The lines are currently spliced together so that everyone has service. While this works short-term, the lines now have to be brought back to their original condition to assure that iVinton continues to function properly in the future.

"Here's the deal. We've got to replace it to put it back to its original condition. In the case of our express cable, it doesn't have an access point at every handle so you may have to go back 1,000 feet. That's going to be built into the cost. Plus the emergency restoration costs that you'll get hit with too. It's never fun, but we need to make sure that we cover all that." He explained that when a bill is sent out, there will be a list of what the damages are and what it takes to get it back to its original condition.

Fridley explained that in 2019 the city got some really great prices, "but it's not 2019 anymore." The cost will be at the current prices and it will cost to have someone come in special to do these repairs. He explained that putting in "drops" are one thing, but 288 fiber cables are something totally different. "Don't settle just for the emergency repairs, that's not really the repairs, that's just to get traffic up. You have the right to have it brought back up to the original condition," he explained to the board. Reminding them that emergency splicing was done just to get everyone back online. But it's not in its original condition.

Rich Hainstock used the example that when the Derecho went through, you might have to patch the corner of the roof that was damaged, but sometimes you have to replace the whole roof to repair it correctly.

Fridley agreed. "It's damaged your infrastructure, so okay, sorry, it happened. If it was located properly, so the contractor didn't hit it..."

Editor's Note:

I know you're going to ask, "How does this work from here?"

The Vinton Municipal Communications Board (the same members as the Vinton Municipal Electric Board) are in charge of the functions of iVinton, and in this case, will have to deal with making sure the proper repairs are made to iVinton fiber. They will be no doubt be dealing with insurance companies as it is all sorted out, again like you'd have to deal with a company after damage to your house. The information shared with the board at this meeting, helps them to better understand the scope of these repairs.

The damage done was a mixture of the cables not being located properly by an outside locating service which resulted in the first cut, maybe even a second.

According to Chris Ward, City Administrator, no other utilities were damaged during the work.