A severed utility pole in Bend on Monday caused a ripple effect throughout Central Oregon that left BendBroadband customers without phone, TV and Internet services for several hours.

The incident prompted many to wonder how one damaged utility pole could have such far-reaching implications.

The service interruption affected about 20,700 phone customers and 17,000 television and Internet customers, according to Krista Ledbetter, a spokeswoman for BendBroadband and its parent company Telephone and Data Systems Inc., a Chicago-based company.

Customers lost services about 6 a.m., after a semitruck crashed into the utility pole near the intersection of Empire Avenue and Nels Anderson Road, close to BendBroadband’s offices on Sherman Road.

Ledbetter said the accident caused a primary fiber line to be cut “at a critical point” of the company’s network.

“Due to its location and close proximity to our main office it caused the outage to be widespread impacting the majority of our customers,” Ledbetter wrote in an email.

Customers in Redmond, Sisters, Terrebonne, Black Butte Ranch and Prineville were without TV, phone and Internet. In Bend and Sunriver, BendBroadband customers lost phone services.

Josh Korotky, a Mountain High neighborhood resident in southeast Bend, said Wednesday he was concerned about his phone line being out Monday because he was recently in the hospital.

“It was kind of scary because I had just been released from the hospital and I was home alone,” said Korotky, who co-owns Pacific Northwest Audiology with his wife.

The Bend clinic was also without phone service and unable to receive calls from patients with questions about their hearing aids.

Korotky said he had questions Monday for his doctor about the medications he was prescribed following his release from the hospital. He had a cellphone but couldn’t reach the doctor’s office on its landline.

“There’s no excuse to not have any backup and to allow something like that to happen for as long as it happened,” he said.

Services were fully restored by about 4:30 p.m. A crew of BendBroadband workers were able to reconnect fiber optic cables.

Ledbetter said the company has network redundancy and a backup system but can’t implement it for every situation.

“Our engineering and network operations teams are currently evaluating the situation,” she said in an email. “Accidents like the one that occurred Monday give us an opportunity to improve and inspect the network.”

Phone service was disrupted at Bend City Hall and the Bend Police Department, according to Randy James, the city’s IT manager. Email and some internal computer programs were also affected.

James said IT technicians found a workaround and were able to redirect phone lines while BendBroadband services were down. Phone service was restored to City Hall at 9:30 a.m. and to Bend Police by 10 a.m., he said. Phone lines for the Bend Fire Department were not affected.

The Oregon Department of Transportation decided to close DMV offices in Central Oregon because of the service disruption.

Deschutes County 911 dispatch doesn’t rely on BendBroadband services for primary communication. The dispatch center has two network paths that can automatically reroute communication if one goes down.

“It did not affect us at all,” said Rick Silbaugh, technology manager for the 911 Service District, about Monday’s outage. “Our phone lines go over separate paths and the same with our Internet connectivity.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7820,

tshorack@bendbulletin.com