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US West will redesign its backup Aim is to prevent another outage By David Preszler A day after a wire meltdown nearly crippled Medford�s phone service, the cause of the problem remains unclear. What is clear is that US West will redesign parts of its backup system to make sure the same thing doesn�t happen again. US West employees are investigating and Pacific Power has, separately, hired an independent electrical investigator to determine exactly what happened and why, company officials said Tuesday. "It will probably take several days to determine what happened," said Gary Miller, US West�s regional manager. The Oregon Public Utility Commission will also investigate the incident to determine what � if any � changes need to be made to insure safe and reliable phone service, PUC officials said Tuesday. The PUC was notified Monday of the incident and its engineers already have begun talking to US West people. The general problem has been identified, even though officials aren�t sure what caused it. Cables connecting a power transformer to the phone company�s downtown Medford switching system overheated and melted early Monday morning. The wires connecting a backup generator to the system were also damaged, which left only battery reserves to maintain service. Those batteries wore down throughout Monday and caused scattered outages and spotty service, particularly in the afternoon hours. Service was running normally by Monday night and no problems were reported Tuesday, Miller said. Pacific Power installed a temporary transformer to provide power until repairs to the original system are made. The central question that remains to be answered is how the problem damaged both US West�s primary power supply and its first line of backup, a diesel-powered generator. "Obviously, we are concerned about the generator backup," said Miller. He said the company will be doing some "obvious redesign things" so the primary power systems and backups are more independent, so a disruption in one doesn�t affect the other. He did note that the batteries � thanks in part to efforts by the community to stay off the phones � lasted longer than expected and prevented a "catastrophic outage." "The system did work," he said. "We had to go to (backup) system three rather than system two, but it did work." The PUC, which regulates US West, said it plans to do a "full postmortem" on the outage. It will seek to determine whether a design flaw or poorly maintained equipment played a role or whether it was simply an extraordinary event. Medford fire officials have essentially closed their investigation, a spokesman said. Since the incident was more of an electrical failure than a fire, the department will leave determining the precise cause to US West, Pacific Power and others. Lack of phones put some work on hold Monday was an usually quiet day for some folks, a remarkably hectic one for others. But for all, one thing was annoyingly clear: We need our phone service. "You�re just amazed at how reliant you are on US West and their facilities," said Answer Page owner Bill Anderberg, reflecting Tuesday on how his business was affected. "We were virtually at a standstill." From businesses to hospitals and emergency services, the impact of Monday�s scattered service failure was widespread. US West officials said the system was operating as usual by Monday night and they had few problems on Tuesday, though one company�s high-capacity connection was down briefly. Monday�s wiring meltdown at US West�s downtown Medford facility interrupted telecommunications of all sorts � phones, Internet connections, pagers, cellular phones, ATMs and credit card processing services, to name a few. At least one business, Costco�s gas station, closed for more than seven hours. The station accepts only credit cards for payment and those transactions couldn�t be processed. "We actually had to shut it down," said Mark Biscaret, Costco�s assistant front-end manager. In Costco�s store, smaller credit-card purchases were handled by a backup system but many larger transactions Costco typically handles couldn�t be done. Sales for the day were markedly lower than normal, Biscaret said. At Safeway stores in Medford, customers had to pay with cash or check for much of the day. Not only were the stores unable to process debit and credit cards, but electronic food-stamp transactions couldn�t be done. Sales remained brisk but customers were inconvenienced, company spokeswoman Bridget Flanagan said. "It�s not the best of times for any retailer when the phones go down," she said. Anderberg�s paging and cellular services were knocked out for the first time in the firm�s 12-year history. The company has backup systems of its own to handle power outages but is still ultimately reliant on US West. "So much of our business is through the phones," he said. "It was major. Hopefully, US West will learn something from this." Gary Miller, US West�s regional manager, said it�s impossible to tell just how many customers lost service. In most areas of Medford, the outages were temporary with service working some of the time. Miller said the company got 300 to 350 reports from residential customers saying their service was out, and around 200 from its data services clients, mainly businesses who pay for high-capacity connections. He said many customers were aware of the problem because of radio and television broadcasts and may not have reported outages. The scattered service made for a hectic day at the area�s police and fire stations, as well as the city�s two hospitals, officials said. Overall, things went smoothly, though contingency plans had to be used: 911 calls were rerouted to local fire stations and police were sent to locations around Medford to help people who couldn�t get through by phone. Paula Gibson, who oversees the city�s emergency dispatch center, said no response to a serious emergency was affected. Communications weren�t hindered at either Providence Medford Medical Center or Rogue Valley Medical Center, but the hospitals did take special measures to make sure that they could reach on-call doctors, surgeons and other personnel. The hospitals handed out special pagers that work independent of US West, as well as walkie-talkie radios. Hospital officials said the early warning they got from US West helped smooth things, as did preparations made recently to prepare for potential Year 2000 problems. 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