On Mon, 13 May 2019, frnkblk@iname.com wrote:
One of my takeaways from that article was that burying fiber underground could likely have avoided many/most of these fiber cuts, though I’m not familiar enough with the terrain to know how feasible that is.
Nature is more powerful than humans. In Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, the hurricanes severely damaged essentially every type of infrastructure. Buried cables, aerial cables, microwave towers, cellular towers, satellite dishes, solar panels, primary and backup power stations, access roads, accesss airports, access seaports, broadcast radio/tv, cable TV systems, etc. etc. etc. All the island backbone ring buried cable systems in PR experienced multiple cuts due to mudslides, bridge failures, and other restoration activites. Immediately after the hurricanes, essentially every infrastructure damage assessment was 75% or worse, with most communications outside plant infrastructure 95% to 100% damaged. When there is only light to moderate damage, independent repair efforts are faster because you avoid lots coodination meetings. But with the major damage in PR and USVI, the lack of coodination caused conflicting repair efforts and re-work for the first several months. It wasn't patch and move on, it was rebuild from scratch.