Thanks to the insane storms hitting Alaska right now (22 inches of rain in 48 hours), Alaska is having all sorts of issues. 66 miles of highway have turned into a river, isolating Valdez from everything, and the oil pipeline was shut down. You can find news stories on both of these pretty easily.
However, one thing I haven't seen any news stories about yet is that Alaska's communication lines seem to have gone to hell. I heard from a friend that the majority of the fiber optic lines that link Alaska to everything are broken at this point from the storms. I can confirm for sure that this is at least partially true. Any websites I know of hosted in Alaska (uaf.edu, uaa.edu, newsminer.com) aren't coming up at all. Beyond that, it looks like PHONES are down too. I was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, and tried contacting some of my friends who still live there. Calling a landline gives me an "all circuits are busy" message no matter what, and calling a cell number doesn't do much of anything. From what I can tell, it looks like Alaska is completely disconnected from the rest of the world right now.
I'm posting this because I was wondering why I couldn't get in touch with any of my Fairbanks buddies and this seems to be why. Again, I haven't found any news stories about this anywhere, so for anyone else with friends/family in Alaska - this is what's going on if you're having problems getting in touch with them. Just a heads up
However, one thing I haven't seen any news stories about yet is that Alaska's communication lines seem to have gone to hell. I heard from a friend that the majority of the fiber optic lines that link Alaska to everything are broken at this point from the storms. I can confirm for sure that this is at least partially true. Any websites I know of hosted in Alaska (uaf.edu, uaa.edu, newsminer.com) aren't coming up at all. Beyond that, it looks like PHONES are down too. I was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, and tried contacting some of my friends who still live there. Calling a landline gives me an "all circuits are busy" message no matter what, and calling a cell number doesn't do much of anything. From what I can tell, it looks like Alaska is completely disconnected from the rest of the world right now.
I'm posting this because I was wondering why I couldn't get in touch with any of my Fairbanks buddies and this seems to be why. Again, I haven't found any news stories about this anywhere, so for anyone else with friends/family in Alaska - this is what's going on if you're having problems getting in touch with them. Just a heads up