On the morning of Dec. 30, retiree Robert Snyder received a visit from Grays Harbor County Deputy Joseph South. Snyder’s brother, Gary Brockway, had contacted the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office to request a wellness check since he hadn’t heard from his brother.
Along Middle Satsop Road, cellphone coverage is spotty. Snyder lives in a dead zone, so he drives to the Brady Food Mart for cell service. He does have a landline phone and internet, but his brother couldn’t reach him by calling or emailing. Synder’s landline and internet service provider is CenturyLink and since Dec. 10, CenturyLink customers north of Gleason Bridge have been without landline or internet service.
The west fork of the Satsop River was among the rivers in Grays Harbor County whose levels rose because of back-to-back rain events that occurred during the first half of December. Although there isn’t a gauge located on the west fork of the Satsop River, there is a gauge on the Satsop River, just before it flows beneath U.S. Highway 12.
On Dec. 7, the gauge height of a U.S. Geological Survey monitoring location on the Satsop River was 31.76 feet; on Dec. 9, it rose to 39.21 feet.
Where the roadway approaches Gleason Bridge, on the left-hand side of the road on the river’s bank stood a utility pole. On Dec. 9, one of Snyder’s neighbors noticed the bank was eroding closer to the utility pole.
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“It was obvious that the pole was going to go,” the neighbor said.
He notified the Grays Harbor Public Utility Department (PUD), and a lineman promptly came out to view the situation. “‘We better get on that,’” the neighbor recalled the lineman saying. “So he called his crews and within about half hour, 45 minutes, his crews were here and all their trucks.”
A new utility pole was installed higher up the bank. The neighbor estimates that power was out for about three to four hours as the crew restrung the primary wire and removed the PUD lines from the old pole.
“[The power] wasn’t out too long,” the neighbor said. “They did a really good job.”
“This is a good example of a customer seeing something that looked off, contacting the PUD, and the utility quickly stepping in to make an emergency repair,” said Ian Cope, communications and government relations director with Grays Harbor PUD.
However, that utility pole also carried CenturyLink’s line that provided landline and internet service to customers north of Gleason Bridge. According to the neighbor, PUD’s lineman said they would call CenturyLink to let them know of the situation. In the meantime, they put a strap around the pole and attached anchors into the bank to keep the pole upright as long as possible. They also cut the CenturyLink lines so if the utility pole fell into the river, it wouldn’t bring down the utility poles on the north side of the river.
On the evening of Dec. 10, the Satsop River rose to 40.29 feet, reaching moderate flood stage. And the bank gave way, sending the utility pole into the river.
Snyder called CenturyLink’s customer service line and spoke with a customer service representative.
“I told him, ‘I have 33 years of experience of dressing poles, every piece of hardware that goes on that pole.’ He listened to me and I said, ‘You’re going to need a splicer crew and you’re going to need an overhead crew and two flaggers because it’s on a bridge and nobody slows down on this road,’” Snyder said.
A CenturyLink crew arrived the following week. They had the personnel and equipment in place to raise the line across the bridge as the PUD crew had, but the neighbor learned, after chatting with the crew’s foreman, that one of the crewmembers wasn’t comfortable with the procedure.
“He said they have a new safety policy that if one person isn’t comfortable with something, they have to shut down the whole operation,” the neighbor said. And as for when the crew would be back to fix the line, he was told, “It may be a month, maybe two months. [The foreman] goes, ‘I have no idea how long it’ll take to be back out here.’”
The CenturyLink crew left, leaving their cable attached to the bridge and lying on the ground.
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The neighbor called CenturyLink to inquire when the crew would return. “They said, ‘We’ll be out by 2:30 on a, I think it was on a Tuesday. … Anyway, nobody ever showed up.”
Calling CenturyLink again got him caught in a loop of the customer service representative thinking the issue was the house connection, not that the CenturyLink line was unconnected.
And because the internet was still down at the end of December when bills were due, Snyder’s neighbor drove his mom into town so she could pay bills. One of which was CenturyLink.
He also found a flyer titled: “Important Notice Regarding Your Telephone Service Credits” that CenturyLink included in the bill. The notice began, “If your residential or business voice line is out of service for more than 24 hours, or if it is not in good working order (for example, if you experience excessive static or noise), you are entitled to an automatic prorated credit equal to one day of your monthly recurring charge for each day your line is out of service or not meeting quality standards.”
What the notice doesn’t say is that “State rules require phone companies to repair service within 48 hours of a problem being reported [WAC 480-120-411(1)(c)]. Customers may also be eligible for daily service credits for each day their phone service is unavailable, starting after the outage is reported [WAC 480-120-164],” Kayla Boland, a communications consultant with Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC), shared via email.
Boland also added that, “staff are aware of long restoration delays with CenturyLink’s phone service (we do not investigate complaints about internet service). The commission has an active formal complaint against CenturyLink (Docket UT-240117) related to service quality and restoration times.”
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And it’s not only customers who are affected by CenturyLink’s lack of timeliness. Woody debris, which includes the utility pole, accumulated underneath Gleason Bridge over the subsequent weeks. On Jan. 14, staff with the Grays Harbor County Public Works division flew a drone over Gleason Bridge to see the extent of the woody debris buildup.
“Woody debris is the larger source of concern at Gleason Bridge, especially with the angle the river is approaching the structure,” John Becker, P.E., the county engineer, shared via email. “The collection of woody debris can potentially cause scour issues where it is collected.”
On Jan. 21, a contractor removed the woody debris from the river, but the one piece couldn’t be removed – the utility pole because of the tangled wires.
Filing a complaint
For CenturyLink customers who remain without service, Kayla Boland shared that customers can file a complaint with UTC’s Consumer Protection team at https://www.utc.wa.gov/FileComplaint or email consumer@utc.wa.gov.
When filing a complaint, consumers should include:
Company name
Customer name (as shown on their account)
Service address
Phone number
Account number
Description of their problem
Any steps taken to resolve the problem
Any questions they have
“Commission staff investigate consumer complaints to find if a company we regulate is violating laws, rules, commission orders, or tariffs,” Boland shared via email. “Commission staff cannot order a company to take an action; we can only identify what a company must do to be compliant and record violations.”
Andrea Watts / The Daily World After falling into the west fork of the Satsop River on Dec. 10, the utility pole became wedged alongside one of Gleason Bridge’s supports and has remained there since. The strap that the PUD attached in an attempt to keep the pole in place is still visible.
Andrea Watts / The Daily World When the CenturyLink crew arrived to restring the phone and internet cable, a crew member said the procedure was unsafe, and the procedure was stopped. They left, leaving behind the cable attached the length of Gleason Bridge, and the ends of the cable are lying on the ground.
