WAILUKU - A contractor doing work on Haleakala Ranch land damaged fiber-optic lines Monday morning, disrupting emergency 911 calls, phone and Internet service for Maui residents, county offices, major resort hotels and businesses.
Pat Bustamante, president of Pacific LightNet, said the damage to a conduit containing fiber-optic cables happened around 9 a.m. on Haleakala Ranch land near the Maui Research and Technology Park in Kihei.
"The damage affected customers on Maui to different degrees," he said. "Pacific LightNet staff worked with our customers to restore their services."
He said those services were being restored as of around 4 p.m. Monday. The problem was on Maui only, he said.
Bustamante said he did not immediately have available the number of his company's Maui customers affected by the outage.
Pacific LightNet subscribes to One Call Hawaii, a service that provides notification to utility companies of upcoming construction where the utility may have facilities, he said.
"Pacific LightNet, along with other utilities operating on Maui, marked the locations of facilities to alert the contractor to not dig in or around the facilities," Bustamante said. "It is unknown at this time how the buried conduit was damaged."
Phone service in and out of the Kalana O Maui building was unavailable when Maui County offices opened for business Monday morning, Maui County spokeswoman Mahina Martin reported.
Pacific LightNet provides the county's telephone service, she said, and the phones were working as of 5:30 p.m.
Martin said phone service among offices within the county building was not affected by the downed phone system, and the county's e-mail system continued working, although county-issued Blackberry phones were without service.
The telecommunications problem was widespread.
Verizon cell phone customers reported problems Monday, primarily with calls that would connect and remain for a few seconds and then disconnect. Internet access was affected for some businesses.
Carol Reimann, executive director for the Maui Hotel & Lodging Association, said her office phones did not work properly Monday. She tried checking member properties and learned that the Ka'anapali Beach Hotel, the Westin Kaanapali, the Kaanapali Beach Club and the Royal Lahaina were not getting incoming or outgoing phone service.
Because she wasn't able to call the resort properties directly, her information came by "just word of mouth," Reimann said.
Internet service at the Westin was working, she said.
The Marriott Maui Resort in Kaanapali had phone service, but not Internet service, she said.
"Obviously, you know it's not good for business," she said. "Communication is everything in this day and age."
Fortunately, she said, hotel reservations are handled off island, but guests still need to be able to make calls to make dinner reservations or book activities for the day.
"It's a good thing most people have cell phones," she said.
Martin said the county's emergency 911 telephone line was briefly affected by the phone problems, but calls were immediately rerouted to a different police dispatch center on Molokai. Dispatchers from the 911 call center at the Wailuku Police Station were using mobile computers and working out of the Lahaina Police Station, with some calls routed through that location on Monday. Unlike the Wailuku station, the Lahaina station was able to receive telephone calls Monday.
