ISP Information:
Synonym for T2
ISP Glossary:
Digital Signal level 2 - TELECOM Digest Editor wrote about theMay, 1988 fire at Illinois Bell in Hinsdale, Illinois.Some questions:1) Was it confirmed officially that the building was unattendedand a fire detector signal was initially ignored? If so, whywas the response to the initial alarm so bad?2) Were the primary and secondary causes of the fire established indetail? That is, were they sure it was lightning, and if so, whatdid the lightning touch off? I would think buildings such as thatwould be very well protected from lightning by 1988.3) What was in the batteries that made them so toxic?4) What kind of switche(s) were in the building (ie xbar, ESS?)5) 1988 was after divesture, the company was not part of the BellSystem anymore. Was there any analysis done to see if divestureresulted in the local company cutting back, such as eliminating24/7 coverage of a critical building? Was the question of whyno attendance ever answered? What is today's practice?6) What about internal protection to prevent a fire from spreading?Large or critical buildings usually have fire doors and floorsdesigned to limit spread of a flame. (Asbestos may be dangerous tobreath, but in older buildings it did the job of fire protectionand heat insulation.)[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Much of my reporting then was a compila-ation of the news reports during May from the Chicago Sun Times andthe Chicago Tribune. (1) it was confirmed officially by Illinois Bellthat the building was always unoccupied over weekends; not even asecurity guard or a data entry clerk (whose salary could have beenpro-rated between departments in order to have at least one personthere who would have been 'sort of busy' part of the time as theyperiodically walked the floors between doing data entry tasks andwatching television, etc). Charles Eibel, then VP of Operations forIllinois Bell said it would have cost too much. Of course we know nowthat such a person's salary would have been amortized for years in thepast and many years in the future even if all the person had done inthe way of 'work' was a handful of punch cards over the weekend andmostly watched TV, compared to what happened that Sunday night.(2) All company facilities in those days (maybe still?) were monitoredremotely from a location in Springfield, Illinois, a couple hundredmiles away. Their excuse was 'the alarms out of Hinsdale had beenfalsing all day for various reasons', so they saw no reason to lookfurther when the fire alarm first went off two hundred miles to thenorth. When several attempts to reset the fire alarm remotely fromSpringfield (there's that 'money saving' mentality again) failed, thealarm person in Springfield decided to call the 'weekend duty supervisor'for the entire Chicago area at home, and ask that person, "when youget a few minutes would you mind driving over to Hinsdale and see whatis going on there?"(3) Lightning caused a spark in the cables somewhere; much like theManchester Guardian fire a month ago in the UK. In the Hinsdale casehowever, that particular Mother's Day had been a hell of a bad mother,with heavy rains, extremely high wind, generally vicious weather conditionsmuch lightning, many dark overcast (almost pitch black) skies theentire day. The very sort of a day, indeed, that alarm signals at somedistant point would be 'falsing' about all the time.(4) They had a variety of central office equipment in the building butthe damage caused by the firemen squirting water on everything(remember, when firemen arrive an inferno like that, typically theywalk right in and start chopping out windows and doors, spraying watereverywhere) was so severe that the amount of oxidation which startedbuilding up and the age of the oldest equipment there turnedeverything into a giant party line when they first turned theequipment back on, which was why the decision was made the switch hadto be abandoned as junk. (I am reminded of a certain seventeen yearold boy, left unamed here, who was employed by University of Chicagoon hot Sun
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