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Fl. County Halts FTTP Until Installation Is Safer
celerityfm writes "Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises (FTTP, see previous) in YOUR neighborhood may involve geysers of raw sewage spewing onto your front yard or sinkholes opening and swallowing moving vehicles. Well, Hillsborough County, host to one of the first FTTP trial sites, has ordered Verizon to stop deployment of FTTP until they can figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside. No word on whether SBC is having similar problems with their fiber roll-out."
First Sinkhole.
>> Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises (FTTP, see previous) in YOUR neighborhood may involve geysers of raw sewage spewing onto your front yard or sinkholes opening and swallowing moving vehicles.
Still sounds like a pretty fair deal to me!
This takes incompetence to a whole new level. I mean, its just a cable. I've installed lots of local and wide area networks without hitting even one sewer line.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Verizon: Delivering the wrong sort of fiber.
eh, it's a small price to pay for high speed internet :) I'll take 2.
thank God! We didn't want Joe Q Public running their own unpatched IIS servers, did we?
figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside.
Well that's easy, drive your kids around in a different type of car, like an SUV.. problem solved!
How is one causing the other? What's fiber got to do with sinkholes and sewage?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I've had all that happen at my house, and I still don't have fiber! That just isn't fair.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
until they can figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside.
Luddites.
I suspect this will be happening alot more considering all the digging they will be doing .
Perhaps one day they can lay the fiber over the telephone lines (since everyone needs those) and
avoid all the digging up (though there might be alot of interference).
Help pay for my wedding! Go to my kickass website
next on news 10, more sh!t than usual with your internet connection...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Reminds me of the streets of a city I used to live in: Spokane, WA, USA. Watch out for those potholes! I tell you, the wheel alignment business there is thriving.
"Verizon also is looking at other means, including using ground-penetrating radar and other technology, to locate lines before crews dig."
Don't they have maps to locate lines, sewers and such? Don't tell me they're digging blindly...
"County auditors examine the cause of each break and determine whether Verizon or water department officials are to blame. The responsible party is billed, said Rich Cummings, section manager for line maintenance for the water department."
It seem that Verizon will be paying the bill in the end anyway... of course, you can't pay for all the trouble it cause to citizens... can't they be careful?
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I knew lots of nerds who never made full use of their water service. This just gives them an excuse not to take a shower.
Don't they have a Miss Utility http://www.missutilityofvirginia.com/ down there?
Am I the only one that took a second to make the leap from software to hardware when I hear the word 'installation'?
It's called DigSafe. I just learned this is a New England (sans CT) thing- what the hell do the rest of you do?
These guys have scoped out my lot two times in the past month, due to the start of a new addition, an (unrelated) emergency oil cleanup...
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Large scale deployment of fiber is quite likely to lead to "geysers of raw sewage" if not properly contained.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Verizon Fiber - Catch The Wave!
/. sinkhole just swallowed up the video server!
The only reason this is news is beacuse it involves FTTP. ANd it's not even Verizon's fault, it's the subcontractors.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
has ordered Verizon to stop deployment of FTTP until they can figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside.
For access to reasonably priced, unmetered high-speed internet access, minivan swallowing sinkholes is an evil that I am perfectly willing to face.
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
The real cause of these events, as yet unobserved, can only be the Devil. You see, about 6 years ago, the Great Destroyer attempted to get DSL installed in his humble abode, told that he was more that 5000m from a C.O. His wrath is just now becomming clear as the Horned Goat himself is now eating up babies.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but don't they have these problems with any kind of underground infrastructural deployments in certain areas? I thought this has more to do with geology than with contractor ineptitude.
Ok, hitting sewer lines is bad, but in theory, before any dig, the local utilites (including sanitation) would come and mark the ground so that this wouldn't happen. But sinkholes? Aren't those things opening up all over Florida all the time anyway? I thought it had to do with the geological makeup of the soil in the area and the lack of firm bedrock, more than bad digging. Not that digging wouldn't exacerbate the problem.
Seems to me the county wouldn't have much room to complain if they hadn't accurately marked underground lines before digging begins, as is usually the law (in every place i've lived anyway.) Also seems like if they did do this, then Verizon's contractors got some 'splainin to do.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Americans haven't figured out how to lay duct work under their streets? Or is this at the sub's premise? how deep do you have to dig a line to put in a fiber drop? Its not like its dangerous to hit a fiber when digging.
Maybe they should have the utility mark where they are supposed to dig like everyone else does?
Where's the story here/ enough senationalism.
I mean, viruses and email scams are dangerous and all, but there's really no reason to panic.
-HJ
Perhaps the submitter could come back and let us know what this has to do with fiber? That'd be great. Otherwise, perhaps we could have some editors remove the sensationalization. It's not like this is the first time a utility company has ever busted up another utilities equipment -- search for NANOG and backhoe on google, for example.
The poster implies Verizon created sinkholes by not filling the holes correctly, but if you read the
article, its really just incompentent employees of Verizon who broke pipes:
Crotty discovered that contractors for Verizon had broken a sewer pipe.
If they had an idea of where the pipes were, maybe they could dig around them and not burst them (Assuming they dont have plans)!
Help pay for my wedding! Go to my kickass website
Since the logic of this doesn't make much since, it is easy to speculate that large companies are saying this as a tactic to milk people for all they can at a certain speed and all the ones inbetween DSL speed s and fiber to the house. Typical corporate consumer upgrade strategy.
... we have something called Miss Utility in the MD/VA/DC/DE area. Each member utility is notified and marks their pipes/wires/whatnot, and then you're not at fault if you bust something that wasn't marked.
Generally, some fella with a metal detector comes strolling through, putting a bunch of fluorescent orange paint stripes on the ground to indicate the general direction/location of underground wires.
We've only ever had cable/power/tv lines marked on our property, and nothing's been damaged during two septic tank repairs, one new well and two additions. I guess PVC would be a little harder, but this is absolutely ridiculous!
I wonder how many Verizon lines have been disrupted as a result of these guys?
The city just laid new water lines where I live and is putting them in all over the place. They should have run fiber at the same time :(
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As if the internet infecting your computer wasn't enough, Verizon is working on a way to infect you.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
I used to work as a contractor for Verizon (VZ) in the Tampa area for a short time. Do note that to VZ, a Pentium II with 64 MB of ram is considered 'top of the line' to them, so go knows what kind of equipment they are using in the field for keeping track of what fiber is going where.
And now they are doing fiber to the home? Hell, the DSL was slow to begin with when they started with homes and businesses. Can't wait to see what the 'promise' and what they actually deliver. Forget about SLA's... they never heard of them.
When will big government stop interfering with the private sector?
Oh well, downloading porn at 100Mbps is worth a few thousand gallons of sewage in my yard. Hopefully I can also total one of my cars in a sinkhole, because im just going to get nailed on trade-in anyway.
It would be far faster, it would be far cheaper than digging trenches, and it would be fair easier to pop a fitting inside the house to extract the fiber from the incoming pipe than digging an entire trench!
They have knowledge but they don't have wisdom.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Just wait until the Verizon sinkholes start swallowing cable TV vans on their way to service appointments. Or maybe that's why they can't hit an 8 hour time frame for showing up at my house?
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Seriously, this reminds me of a news story in recent weeks where a company installing cable managed to break open a gas line. Incinerated the workforce and a passerby.
What is it with negligence and installation, these days? There's no shortage of people you can call to check if there's something nearby you need to avoid. If you prefer to do the job yourself, you can always hire a ground-penetrating radar.
(Given that it's cheaper to rent one of those toys than to replace a house or pay families compensation for deaths through negligence, it wouldn't be such a bad idea for companies to use these as standard.)
Given how much cost-cutting and corner-cutting that companies almost have to do, to stay competitive and profitable, I expect this problem to get worse, as the information demands make upgrading copper to fibre increasingly necessary.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Because if I can crawl out of a sewage filed sinkhole and download new Slackware ISO's in under a minute, you may have yourself a deal.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
until they can figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside.
Good, killing two birds with one stone. I thank Verizon for helping remove more soccer-mom-driven minivans from the road. And as for the children... maybe now I can go seen a R rated movie without having some kid crying up and down the isles.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
"they can figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside."
I think I'd pay extra to have this happen in my neighborhood. Where do I sign up?
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
County workers broke the water line at Lakeview and North Dale Mabry while trying to repair a break in a sewer line caused by Verizon contractors on Friday. That break left sewage spewing beneath the road, opening a hole that nearly swallowed a car.
Whoops. :) Way to go there, guys.
-jdm
sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside
:o)
How exactly does one engineer a sinkhole that knows whether or not there are children inside a minivan?
Ye gads - intelligent sinkholes!
Cue the "new sinkhole overlords" jokes.
This is probably a great deal for the diggers; the cost of paying the county to fix the breaks is probably less than preventing them. Therfore, the only stick that the county has is to say STOP! No more digging until you clean up your act!
Call JULIE before you dig!
Despite DigSafe, there was a major gas leak this summer during road construction near my work (I think it was related to installing a traffic light). I belive that the conclusion was that the gas main wasn't exactly where the records showed it. I've heard of other similar problems.
And when you're dealing with infrastructure that may a hundred years old, there simply aren't accurate records indicating where the pipes are.
C'mon now, sh*t happens. If you are going to dig up the road, things are going to break fromthe old infrastructure. It's a good story for the 6:00 news, but things like this are going to happen anyway. It's only because the name Verizon is involved and they get footage of a car in a hole, that this is newsworthy.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Only in florida would people not study the problem with sinkholes in the first place. As if the billboards everywhere saying "lost your home in a sinkhole?" didn't let verizon know that they should do better groundwork checking.
At least it was in hillsborough county, and not polk county. In polk, sinkholes are such a problem a city called winterhaven claims "land of 1000 lakes." You know where those lakes came from? You guessed it, Sinkholes. Everywhere.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Any time you dig, you have a chance of creating a sink hole. Basically, you have to be able to put the dirt back into the hole as dense as it was when it came out. If you fill in the hole and have dirt left over, then you will probably get a sink hole.
Even taking the above into account, the trench you need to bury a cable is only an inch wide. That shouldn't create much of a sink hole. No, the really good sink holes happen when you break a water or sewer main and the water washes a bunch of dirt away and then the whole thing collapses when you drive over it.
I agree with most of the other posters; this sure wouldn't happen where I live. Are these guys totally incompetent or is there something going on that we don't know about. Around here, you call the phone company and the water company and the gas company and they mark all their stuff for you at no charge to you.
I have worked utility construction, and yes that stuff does happen from time to time. It happens when old lines are maintained too. Any underground work poses those risks. There are standards and procedures for working underground which are generally adhered too. One of the biggest problems is poor marking of old lines (in the ground and on surveys).
This sounds to me like a complaint of a competitor desperately trying to stop progress.
"brxref
They have been rolling out FTTP here in Fairfax, Virginia and I have heard no complaints. Someone I know just got it installed (which also involved digging up a trench to put the line to his house), and he said they did a great job covering their tracks. Guess it's just the luck of location. Then again, I still can't get it...
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Hillsborough County ordered Verizon to halt work on its multimillion-dollar fiber-optic cable project Tuesday after contractors repeatedly ruptured water lines, leaving neighborhoods without water and opening gaping holes on busy streets.
At least the county is getting damages:
When the lines are broken, county crews make the repairs, VanDyke said. County auditors examine the cause of each break and determine whether Verizon or water department officials are to blame. The responsible party is billed, said Rich Cummings, section manager for line maintenance for the water department.
So, once blame has been established by the county, can individuals sue for damages as well?
Gotta say though, this gives a whole new meaning to "dropped connection" *groan*.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
... to do their first deployment.
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
I live in Hillsborough County, FL. I've watched the crews install the fiber, and, to me, the demographics of the workers scream illegal alien labor. Who is actually doing the job, Verizon or a contractor? Does anyone out there know?
I think every time a FTTP article I must mention this, but this is one plus to living in Utah. the fiber based initiative is community owned and NOT owned by the Telcoms and just think, if there is enough of a geek swell to Utah, we could oust Orrin Hatch! :-) OK, that was delusional thinking, but, but, it might work, plus we'll have FTTH, not just FTTC!! :-) (which won't do much good because of the draconian community indecency policies, which effectively outlaws not only porn but anything >= R rated movies...On second thought, perhaps we can live with the telcoms, at least we can still get our porn from them ;-)
"...creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside..."
So does this mean that the holes somehow exercise a choice and only open if a minivan with children inside goes above them?
Or does it mean that someone chooses to use an anecdotal occurance to sensationalize a dull story?
Maybe someone who got a "writing" job by mistake.
</sarcasm>
Reading such lame and manipulated scoops pisses me off.
1 - Dig Hole
2 - Get covered in sewage
3 - Minivan full of children sinks in sewage
4 - ???
5 - Profit!
how long until
Well, Hillsborough County, host to one of the first FTTP trial sites, has ordered Verizon to stop deployment of FTTP until they can figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside
No wonder. Of course they'll do that if children are mentioned.
Now if the minivan had, say Darl McBride/CarrotTop/Gilbert Gottfried/etc, they'd have the whole state fibered already.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises (FTTP, see previous) in YOUR home may involve geysers of raw sewage streaming into your PC.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Holes in sewer pipes.
Oh wait, same thing.
I work for a telco and we plough cable every day. We do this in populated neighborhoods and new lots. It is extremely rare that we cut a cable (in fact I do not know of one in over a year), but NEVER a pipe. This work is not really Verizon's fault as it seems they are hiring subcontractors to do the work. This is a simple case of incompetence where the subcontractors do not call for a LOCATE (or they get a locate done so far in advance that it washes away or something).
Also, I'm sure you all realize that this has nothing to do with fiber to the home, it has to do with people not being able to dig properly.. no matter what they are laying in the ground.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
All for only $109.95/month!
What a deal!
Seriously, I'm sorry you got screwed like this. I hope they compensated you with cold hard cash.
Okay, so some kids may be lost, but this is fiber to the home we're talking about here! Some sacrifices must be made.
Besides, it's not like they're taxpayers or anything. Plus, what're they gonna DO, CRY about it? Puh-lease. Stupid cry-babies.
Get two bent rods, a psycic, and start dowsing... crap it would probably work better than using old shitty maps.
About what percentage of the reported "sinkholes" are really "sinkholes" as opposed to "deep potholes" or other relatively small holes?
The bandwidth gods want their lb of flesh for the bandwidth they will grant us...
I for one welcome our FTTP overlords...
So, anybody know if the county voted Republican or Democrat?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
To laugh at the thought of a Minivan of small childred being swalowed by sinkholes?
And does it make me a worse person to wish it would take socer moms with it if it would mean faster internet access?
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.
To rule the world as geeks and defeat the mad soccer mom army!
typical verizon.... creating bills for services no one ever asked for. can you pay me now?.... good.
So it's not a matter of their installers being idiots and not calling tha 800 number before digging?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Probably not - most of Florida is barely above sea level, so there's just not as much room to bury things that you don't also want below the water table. It's no surprise they're accidentally chewing up other utilities.
Combine that with the fact that much of Florida is seated on limestone, which is easily eaten away resulting in sinkholes, and I think this is probably a fairly localized problem, and has next to nothing to do with FTTP.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
As you point out, repairing a fiber is expensive.
However, some soils just aren't made for buried cable. Either they shift too much, which can cause damage, they are too hard to dig cheaply, or there are legal or other costs that make poles cheaper.
I guess they THOUGHT in Hillsboro county, Florida, digging was cheaper. Maybe it's time to rethink fiber on poles.
If it weren't for pesky things like rain, birds, and the need for constantly realigning transmitters and receivers, laser-through-the-air would be the way to go for some applications. Of course, line-of-sight and reduced bandwidth compared to fiber is also an issue.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
....don't take too kindly to SABOTAGE!! HEHEHEHEH!
Take off every sig. For great justice.
You mean to tell me that Florida is a sinkhole, swirling with raw sewage?
Duh!
Is it Verizon directly digging and breaking things, Or is it their lowest bidder contractor?
It sounds to me like whoever they have doing the work needs to go back to contractor school.
If it were me, I'd say who cares!!! all that stuff is outside, but I've got fiber to my house, I'm never coming out again!
If you can read this, you are most likely close enough.
Here on the Olympic Peninsula, I have 100Mbps FTTP provided by Clallam County PUD and Noanet. The only sewage problems I have are those of spam coming into my mail server.
And BTW, the fiber is strung up on the power poles here.
Thats an intersting idea, but that is so untested and completely different than standard operating procedure that they will screw up just as much trying to make it work. You'll end up spending more trying to make something new and unproven work, then just plowing ahead. Something like that would have to be tested in a more controlled enviorment for a couple of years before being unleashed upon the populace. Just so they work out all of the kinks and really refine the procedures down.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
You're wrong.
Telecom companies typically do not have the manpower or equipment to dig, because they don't do it full time. Why buy all that expensive equipment and have all those extra employees sitting around when there's nothing to do. And no, maintenance does not justify it: the lines last plenty long enough without maintenance. This means that they hire someone to put the wire in... you know what they're called? subcontractors!
Now since it's not Verizon who's doing the digging but the subcontractors, guess whose responsibility it is to make sure the area is OK to dig in: the people who are doing the actual digging or the people who sit in an office miles away and write the checks to the workers?
Why would a news item involving something like a low-tech subcontractor appear on slashdot? Because someone wanted the Karma for posting a story, and the editors didn't check it out closely. The editor saw "FTTP" & "Verizon" and obviously doesn't know much about the whole process of digging, so it made front page.
Mod appropriately next time. The parent wasn't 'flamebait' because they recognized where the blame should lie, and simply posted about it. At the worst, it should be 'troll' because it's worded in a way that sounds angry and could incite even more angry responses, and at the best it should be 'informative' because it gives a breath of truth to a sketchy article someone submitted for the purpose of getting their name on the front page.
Well, those old farts and their antiquated hobbies (sheesh, does anyone these days still _use_ sewers?!) had just better learn to roll with the punches. I mean, c'mon -- I can get fast broadband access if this goes ahead, so I don't care about ruptured sewer lines or sinkholes or anything like that. Just pee in your Zip-drive. And you can telecommute and order out, so why worry about sinkholes under the roads? This is the 21st century, get out of my way! I want I want I want!
*cough* Or something like that.
This happened with our old cable company here in Florida as well. Migrant laborers with shovels come in and dig the crap out of your front yard. It pisses me off two. You come home from work and find a huge hole with dirt and crap everywhere and then it takes you months to put evertyhing back together when they finish.
The new owner of the cable company actually uses newer equipment to push cables between smaller holes. It doesn't make as big of a mess although the equipment is expensive and looks like it probably takes a lot to maintain.
It sounds like they need to maybe spend a little more on the installation and make it bearable for the homeowners. I know that it used to piss me off really bad to come home and find a huge hole in my front yard. I'd love to have fiber to my house but I know that I wouldn't put up with the mess shown in the pictures. It isn't necessary.
SuX0rs to be j00, my immune systemz runz0rs Looni....oh, wait...
Sure enough, they went Bush/Chenney.
But only if you live in soviet russia :P
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Save yourself the click; Miss Utility isn't hot, and there aren't even any bikini shots.
=(
wow. thats a lot of dirt. ... oh you meant a 4x4 piece of wood? ok then.
Me, I'll take the sinkholes, so long as I get my fiber!
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
Some of the contractors in FL must be the same ones that keep severing lines in Ohio...remember when someone cut a few fibre lines and hosed the net? (Page down to "oops")
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
I work in the industry. Florida absolutely has a call center setup for this (it's called the One-Call industry BTW).
http://www.callsunshine.com/corp/
I have no idea why they are using paper maps for this. As another poster points out, the caller (Verizon in this case) would call the call center. The call center will notify the utilities (or other entities) that are interested in a area (usally by grids, but some companies use other methods). The utility then sends someone (or subcontracts out) to go and 'paint' where the undergound facilities are.
Here are some other companys that write software for the call centers.
http://www.occinc.com/
http://www.teldig.com/
Most states however, write their own software to do all of this (FL is one of the ones that write their own).
Feces to the Premises
Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises (FTTP, see previous) in YOUR neighborhood may involve geysers of raw sewage spewing onto your front yard or sinkholes opening and swallowing moving vehicles.
So what! I rent. Let him deal with it. What do I pay him for?
Oh, Mr Cassidy! Didn't see you there, sir! Eviction? Ah, man...
Everyone's overlooking a major point here. Think about it. It's 2004. Practical fiber optic technology has been has been around since the 70's, or so says the Wikipedia. Why weren't these things already in the ground 15 years ago?
WHY IN THE NINE LAYERS OF HELL ARE WE STILL USING COPPER!?
-Rod Beauvex
If you're ever going out into the wilderness, bring a PVC pipe with you. If you get lost, you can bury it in the ground, and a Verizon crew will be along shortly to break it.
In NY called a code [somenumber] Utillities have 48 hours to mark their lines when you call. Some do it off plans. The gas line folks has a detector to mark it exactl location (within a foot).
South Carolina Palmetto Utility Protection Service (PUPS)
/ html/about_howtouse.html
1-888-721-7877
http://www.sc1pups.org/
http://www.sc1pups.org
My thoughts as a tech for a civil engineering firm:
Most states or regional areas have a utility "hotline" that contractors are supposed to call 24 hours before digging commences. The construction plans always specify this explicitly. If the contractor didn't call before digging, they are always at fault, no matter how wrong the plans were about utility locations.
If they did call, then there's some legitimacy to saying "hey, we were told there weren't any utilities here". City utility maps are notoriously inaccurate, especially for older installations. You'd be surprised how many cities don't have plans going back more than 60 years because city hall burned down in the 40s. Decent fire protection is a surprisingly modern addition.
I do understand that sometimes "shit happens", but even if the city and utility companies didn't know exactly where the utilities were, if the contractor knows that they are nearby, they ought to be more careful. The bigger question is why are they putting in residential fiber with a backhoe? I'm hoping that picture is depicting a water line repair, not the actually installation.
I call Miss Utility everytime I need to have a big hole, or I want to lay some pipe.
Walnut Creek, CA, just had a digging disaster when a crew excavating for a water main hit an aviation fuel pipeline. Five people dead. 170 homes and two schools evacuated, Massive firefighting effort. Secondary flareups occured for two days. The drawing for the fuel pipeline apparently didn't show where the pipeline changed direction.
The workers were about shoulder deep in my front yard burying some sort of large junction box every other yard or so. The workers sliced through my Brighthouse Cable and cut TV and Internet off in my house for a day. Then Brighthouse had some sweaty mullet come fix the cable. He just ran the cable across my yard. Then two days later sweaty mullet #2 came back and buried the new Brighthouse cable in my yard. My wife has pics somewhere of the trashed cable. Verizon did put a sign up in the front of the neighborhood with the number to call with complaints. Clearly expecting it. They laid fresh sod for anyone who complained about the easement being destroyed. I don't care. I just want my damn FIOS so I can call Brighthouse and tell them off. Supposedly in ~2005 they will be doing television over the same lines.
Just use the sewage to fill in the sink holes!!!
"Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises in YOUR neighborhood may involve geysers of raw sewage spewing onto your front yard..."
Sounds like working in my cubicle!
I'm a Florida resident, I can tell you digging in Florida never goes smoothly. You have to realize, the water table can be as close as a few feet under the ground. This means anything underground has to be shoved into those few feet, dangerously close to the surface.
ANother problem is the soil is very sandy and the closest thing we have to bedrock is a porous water filled layer of limestone, an extremely weak and easily eroded material.
The third problem is human error. Most development in Florida was done quickly and cheaply, by people that shouldn't be allowed to hold a hammer, much less design an entire neighborhood. The county inspectors are the people who couldn't hack it as developers (I am exaggerating, I understand there are some fine upstanding inspectors and surveyors, but I've never met one). The maps on file with the county are often horribly wrong. Some eletrician friends I know who work for one of the largest subcontractors for Florida Power and Lighting, tell me often the safest way to dig is dig a test hole where another cable is supposed to be, and when you don't find it, lay your cable in it's spot. The only way Verizon would have a chance would be to hire the people who work for the county and power companies etc. They know better than to trust the map.
Well maybe the laws are different in FL, but in NY State there's a number you have to call before digging to ensure that there's no underground wires/pipes/etc.
Different laws??? For God's sake, this is a state with its own Fark.com icon.
Let's see.
FTTH.
Geysers of sewage.
I think we can safely sacrifice up to 12.5% of the population in the deployment.
Let the pr0n wars begin!
I'll see you on the other side! Go Fiber!
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Of course, that didn't prevent a Verizon sub-contracting crew a few years ago from hitting a natural gas line and taking out two houses.
Currently I have NO reasonably priced broadband, and none in the near future. For reasonably priced high speed unmetered broadband, I'd go out, dig a hole, and if you're willing to front the $1000 for the used minivan I'll find one for $1000 and drive it into the hole myself.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Ask your dad how well his "tone generator" would work with PVC pipe.
Actually, I should *my* dad what he'd do. He's been known to douse for pipe in the field before -- successfully.
I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that his dousing success is due in no small part to his unbelievably fanastic memory.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Once the spammers get a hold of Fios service we'll be seeing geysers of spam erupting from front lawns when people dig! This is Florida after all...
does this mean that the holes somehow exercise a choice and only open if a minivan with children inside goes above them?
Of course not. You're taking the quote out of context.
If you read the whole sentence, it's quite clear that what they're trying to do is engineer a sinkhole so that it *can* excercise a choice, and only swallow minivans *without* children in them.
Hey, I'll put up with that for a fiber connection. The roads are so bad in my town anyway. I reported a water leak down my street over four months ago and they are just looking at it now. Not fixing, just looking!
It always cracks me up when I see a negative story about a company, and within the same article a targeted advertisement for that company or related product.
It was actually a reclaimed water pipe that the contractors busted when they put the box for the fiber on my property line. Had to have the water dept. come out to shut it off, then spent my entire vacation chasing them to fix it. I'm awaiting the sinkhole to develop, it hasn't yet. I'm lucky I went out that night, when I came home the water hadn't bubbled up yet out of the ground, left the house an hour later and it was verging on a swamp. I'm on the Hillsborough/Pasco county line.
I guess Verizon hasn't deployed it here yet. I type "fttp://slashdot.org/" into Firefox and get "fttp is not a registered protocol".
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
I bet some geeky mexicans are laughing their asses off at home after they broke all those water mains. 200 don't happen out of incompetance, mabye stupidity, but certainly not incompetance; a water main is a quarter or half inch thick steel PVC reinfored with cement if memory of the last installation in my area serves me properly; they don't exactly break with a shovel. One of the larger digging machines might do the trick, but even then, you move slowly if you don't have the plans for where the main is. When you hear the "ding" or the motor going into high gear, you stop. Florida is mostly sand, and there aren't exactly huge boulders buried beneath the earth like in maine.
So, from the slashdot community (or at least, one small nut of it), we thank you, oh nameless, crazy geek mexican for sticking it to verisign, and scaring some hapless soccer mom. As much as people would hate to lose a nice phat 30Mbps pipe, I think they want to see verisign fail even more.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I don't have any children or minivans.
Once FTTP is connected, she'll have a "geyser of raw sewage spewing into her" family room, living room, bedroom, kitchen, basement, ...
So wait, doing this causes SUVs to sink into the ground along with anoying mum and kids??? where do I sign??
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Apparently infrastructure management is a pretty big problem in FL. Most municipalities have no clue where their lines are anyway, so it doesn't help to call them. This was a huge problem for the many EOC's around the state with the recent hurricanes.
If the cost of paying to have the break fixed is less than preventing the break in the first place it sounds like a great time to impose a fine on breaking lines by not being careful with your digging.
Honestly this sounds like a bunch of contractors not doing due diligence. It also sounds like the backhoe operators need to slow down and be careful. I agree with the stop but it can't be forever. They need to stop it now and make it clear that any further breaks will result in fines and a preponderance of breaks from a single contractor will result in steps to revoke that contractors licence.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
The broadband customers who run Linux on their PC's reported that the sewage had a pleasant, flowery odor and the minivans swallowed by sinkholes contained only children known to be bratty and obnoxious.
But if the diggers are used to make the breaks by one company then fix the breaks by the county it can be a boon for them.
Like programmers paid to build something then paid again and again to fix bugs.
It's a win win situation for the guys in the "trenches"!
"It looks like it because Verizon fell victim to using the lowest bidder for it's subcontracting in laying the cable, while it isn't FTTP's fault it's verizons fault for not hiring better contractors and the sub contractors fault for doing shoddy work to save a buck."
If you read the article (you did right?)? It mentions that inaccurate maps are part of the problem, especially in older parts of town.
10$ says that contractor gets blacklisted!
Why not really hellish names like "Asmodean", "Beelzebub", and "Cerberus"?
:o)
Why not something more direct, like "Kick your ass back to the stone age", or "killed thousands, and you're next"?
To me, that would be the best way to convince people that they're something to be taken seriously.
This blame game wouldn't happen in Kansas. Kansas law requires an official "locate" before digging can commence. If the owners of said buried lines fail to locate their lines or mark them in the wrong spots, causing them to be dug up, they are responsible for the damage. Not the one doing the digging. I'm surprised Florida doesn't have a similar law.
I would assume that a public works department or some other agency would keep records of where things are buried under their streets?
I don't know a lot about the telecom industry, but I assume that they are supposed to follow some sort of digging plan based on information from the town. I suppose they may not have these things, and/or the subcontractors are just that terrible. Someone above me posted something about the water table, so there could be legit reasons for poking holes in pipes. I just have to wonder, did they have any kind of map or plan?
FTTP is supposed to be tested in my area soon, I can't wait!
..."a sinkhole at the worst possible moment." So what is the best possible moment for a sinkhole? (I know, there was a car in the sinkhole)
Since when are the sewer pipes under high pressure? The sewerometer reads 130,000 psi (poops / square inch).
It's pretty much the same way out here. If you don't mark your lines, it's your problem...
However, in the article, the county is also complaining that the contractors aren't telling what happened when they dig up a line. That's a big problem.
The city I live in is all 100% buried lines. All power, phone, cable, gas and water is buried. No telephone poles anywhere. The only exception is the high-tension towers coming down into the substations.
Early this past spring, the electric utility ran new lines down the street to the distribution transformer at the end of the street.
All the utilities came out and painted lines all over the place indicating where buried lines were. However, about 1/2 the residents on my street wound up with severed phone or cable lines. You could count them, because they were repaired first with temporary lines that you could see running along people's yards, then buried later.
My cable was cut, as was my neighbor to the right. My neighbor to the left had their phone line cut.
No water, sewer or lines were hit, but we likely have copper and iron lines (early 70's placements).
Buried utilities are always a bit of a mess. If Florida expected no incidents like this they are fools at best. Very few utilities have good accurate maps that are 100% free of mistakes. Most are riddled with mistakes and lines get hit. Really, you need to prevent where possible, but hits are going to be common.
-Matt
I never have understood what was so difficult about RTFA for the majority of Slashdotters. I can certainly understand not RTFA is the server hosting it is Slashdotted. That makes sense of course. I don't think that was the case here though. Anyhow, the county's maps are seriously borked. Verizon does have the maps of course but they aren't exactly useful. It's basically Russian Roulette with a backhoe. The maps for the older neighborhoods show lines in the wrong spots. It's hard to not dig something up that's supposed to be over there *points 6 feet away*. The newer neighborhoods use PVC for water and sewer lines. This is what's used nowadays but it's extremely easy to break. PVC breaks are expected quite frankly. You have figure them into to every bid. If anyone is to be blamed it should be the county for maintaining piss poor maps.
Witching doesn't always work.
Amazingly, it works at exactly the rate predicted by chance. Funny, that.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
There are two types of lines you don't want to hit. They are High Pressure (HP) gas lines and fiber optics lines. From my experience, I've hit gas and electric myself and they are relatively cheap to fix, besides the call to the fire department and the potential risk of electric shock, there aren't that big of deal.
The overall cost of hydrovac'ing all the possible troubles is higher then paying the repair bills.
..for the future anyway. This problem has been around a long time, just maybe there should be a regulation that plastic pipe buried underground have some ferrous powder mixed into the plastic so that any normal metal detector could find it. Maybe they thought of that though, and the metal would weaken the plastic though, because it might rust and cause microscopic weepy leaks and leech into the water into the house. I don't know, perhaps an additional coating on the inside might fix that potential problem. So an alternative, just have some cheap wire run with it, along side it in the trench.
a.) Any underground excavation requires you call the 1-800-DIG-ALERT number. If you've ever look on any set of Civil drawings you woudl know that.
b.) Now you are right, there are maps, and yes some are out of date. However very few are, and when there is doubt a simple Sonar, or EMR scan is done to locate any pipes.
The problem is the company Verizon is using for thier excavation is doing it ass backwords.
Just had my septic system replaced and before any excavator's and dump trucks could do anything, the excatation company had to call "Call Before You Dig program [ http://www.cbyd.com ] in CT. This to me should be a no brainer for all states to mandate as it will prevent issues and nightmares like Florida is having. Wonder why Verizon didnt call this place "http://www.callsunshine.com/corp/" first - hell its FREE!
If the county had proper records of where the utilities are, this more than likley wouldn't happen at all. Not to mention that most of Hillsbourough Co is over a little sinkhole we like to call the Florida Aquifer. Even with all these hurricanes we've had, I'd still bet dollars to doughnuts that we're still below normal rainfall level. I design similar inside & outside plant plans for a living & on every single one (for *any* company, QWEST, Verizon, BellSouth etc) there is a little number (Florida One Call in Florida) that the plant installers (diggers) are supposed to call so they can get locates for various utilities. I'd bet that the fault lies with the city for not having those records updated *and* for approving the permits to dig to start with.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Brighthouse Networks did similar (replacing CATV copper with fiber) work here in the Tampa Bay region a year or so ago without the multitude of issues that Verizon is having.
So, bullshit on that. It is possible to lay fiber and dig up lawns without breaking pipes and letting water mains leak thousands of gallons of water for 7 hours.
Best possible moments for a sinkhole:
Dear God, won't somebody think of children?!?
"Yea, most Cable companies put geysers of raw sewage right in peoples living rooms."
Well that's one way to describe cable TV programming.
Let's face it. It is the resposibility of the utilities to make sure they know where their lines are and provide that information. This crap were the county say's, oh, we know some of the maps are not correct but they could use gps, blah blah blah. Bullshit, Provide the contractors with accurate maps and then start blaming the contractors when pipes are hit. Just like a damn city or any government for that matter. Don't do what they should do because they can blame someone else down the road and make them fix any problems that arise because of it. Get a grip people. We pay these utilities a crap load of money, Water, sewer, cable, electric, phone, whatever. It is there job to know where their lines are and to provide that information to ANYONE that needs it.
putting the fiber underground it pretty capital intensive but if they would run them above ground like some power/telephone lines they would be affected mych more by weather and have to replace sections much more often... dealing with sewage bursts is probably a better and more cost effective alternative
Get your torrents...
> Amazingly, it works at exactly the rate predicted by chance. Funny, that.
/.
Are you claiming the water detectors don't work at all? Hell, I guess I'm a fraud. I guess since I've been right >99% with my tools at finding buried PVC water pipes that it must just be due to chance. I guess you're also calling my competition, a PHD from Cal Tech that uses impulse radar witching equipment, is a fraud. The EU sponsored his research. He did a good job fooling them since the all-knowing egomanic says he's a fraud. He's not as good as I am, but after the DSP techniques are fully tweaked, I bet his techniques will be better.
The local water company has started requiring tracing wires in PVC pipe. That makes witching dead simple. They work like the "fox and hounds" you use on your phone or network cables. I guess the troll here would also call those guys frauds.
Look, if you don't know anything about a subject, how about keeping your mouth shut? Nah, that's too much to ask on
I don't know. I think calling a modern technological method of achieving something after the fairly similar superstitious beliefs of the last several thousand years is just asking for trouble.
"Scientists have discovered a new sub-atomic particle. The discoverer has named the tiny particles 'fairies.'"
He's just talking about a guy with a pointed stick.
Not hardly. It's highly accurate. Chance and luck don't have a thing to do with it. Obviously you've never tried it.
I read it but I must have overlooked that part. Yeah, that would be a big problem if they're doing that. Definitely irresponsible. Perhaps they have too many grunts and not enough foremen on the job sites. That might account for it. Maybe.
Sounds like a nice town. I'd love to see one like that sometime. Buried everything must be very aesthetically pleasing.
Really, you need to prevent where possible, but hits are going to be common.
Yeah, it's expected. Really you can't dig in any industrialized city and not expect to hit something. That's just the way it works. Like we netadms always say, there's nothing better for finding buried fiber than a backhoe. Network went down? Blame it on a backhoe interrupt. :-)
Hah, found a solution.
Bury it with tons of RFID attached to them or any other device that can be used to detect these shits underground.
Clearly, undocumented pipes are the problem here, but we should tag these sons of bitches because government can't always be relied upon to keep documentation.
Also, if they were undocumented and without RFID, I don't see how Verizon can be fined for breaking them. If I were Verizon, I'd be like "what the fuck were you doing, not keeping track of the pipes in your county?!?"
Question) What will go 100 MPH and blow you in the back seat?
Answer:)A hurricane!
Libertas in infinitum
Next, frogs and fish will rain from the heavens followed by multiple hurricanes.
Dowser: "...mmm the fiber, ya."
Sam: "Yes, but do you have a twenty-seven B-stroke-six? Sorry, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork."
(... a bit later, Sam can be seen switching the "Fiber" and "Raw sewage" lines. Spoor and Dowser's plastic suits fill up completely with excrement and explode.)
Sam: "Shit!"
Tuttle: "We're all in it together, kid."
"Sounds like a nice town. I'd love to see one like that sometime. Buried everything must be very aesthetically pleasing."
Aesthetics is one of the nice features.. Lack of outages during storms is another good one.
The fact that the city is sufficiently picky about appearances that they've banned above ground lines does also have it's drawbacks. It's a whole city that's a "planned community", and at times getting approval for something like cutting down a tree that died due to disease can take up to two months of pushing paper through the advisory boards. If your timing is good you can get approval in 2-3 weeks, but if it's bad...
-Matt
Good grief. See, that's why I'd hate to live in a city with people that think they can control what I do on my own property. If have a tree in my yard that I want to take down I'll damned well take it down. It reminds me of the bored people that create these neighborhood committees (I can't think of the phrase right now) that tries to establish and enforce a dresscode for your property; what color your roof can be, what kind of grass can make up your lawn, the size and shape of flowerbeds in front of your house, yadda, yadda, yadda. Basically the bored busy-body of yesteryear has been reborn to start and run these annoying committees. There were a number of news stories about them prior to the elections when they tried to prevent people from putting political signs in their front yards. They ended up getting their asses handed to them in court for trying to stifle political free speech. Yowzers.
Like I said, it's definitely got it's drawbacks....
And yes, we've got a dresscode, much as I dislike it.
I don't particularly like that aspect, but there are some nice frills that offset it a bit. (always nice looking area, very nice public parks, gyms, pools, etc). And, most importantly, I'm 5 miles from work.
I'm willing to suffer some extra hours of paper pushing on the rare occasion I want repaint my house a different color in to save myself time in my everyday commute to work. (tradeoffs, gotta love em.)
-Matt
The state of Georgia has this same "Call Before You Dig" law. You will be fined or shut down or both if you dig into existing facilities without having the facilities located.