RKCRLR
Active Member
Garden Valley had the evacuation warning lifted Sunday evening and life is pretty much back to normal for us. The only electrical impact impact to me was smoke obscuring solar production on some days.
Georgetown has had its mandatory evacuation order lifted.
On a off-topic note, I discovered how poorly communication can be within telecommunication companies during a fire.
A week before the Mosquito fire we lost both home internet (AT&T fixed wireless which uses cell towers) and both my wife and I lost internet access on our Verizon cell phones. We contacted AT&T who told us everything on their end was OK so they set up a service appointment for the following week (the problem was happening on a Sunday evening). I was unable to get ahold of a live person at Verizon. Their automated system required me to click on a link in a text message before I could continue which didn't work since I had no internet. I called my sister who lives about half an hour from me to see if her internet was working, which it was. She could chat with a Verizon person who gave several phone numbers for me to try but each one routed me back to the same automated system which sent me a text with a link to click on before I could continue. The tech my sister was chatting with finally just said I would have to wait until the next morning to get ahold of a live person.
The next morning I was having the same problem but finally managed to get ahold of a live person (I had to select a sales option to talk to a sales person so they could route me to customer service). The customer service person insisted their system was working normally and the problem was with my phone even after I explained that my wife had the same problem on her phone as well as our home internet being out. I followed all her troubleshooting steps until she told me I was going to have to do a factory reset. At that point I stopped.
My neighbor came over that afternoon. He told me that there was a small fire that burned through the main communications cable to our area and that all the landlines were down (I have VOIP so I wasn't aware of the land lines being down). He told me there were several AT&T repair vehicles working on the telecommunications line when he drove by in the morning. So at the same Verizon was telling me that the problem was on my end there were service crews making repairs to the system. Luckily, the fire was contained and didn't grow into a large fire. If I had followed the Verizon representative's instructions I could have been in a situation where I had to evacuate but had either an inoperable phone or a phone like a brand new phone with none of my contact information since it requires internet to repopulate the information.
Georgetown has had its mandatory evacuation order lifted.
On a off-topic note, I discovered how poorly communication can be within telecommunication companies during a fire.
A week before the Mosquito fire we lost both home internet (AT&T fixed wireless which uses cell towers) and both my wife and I lost internet access on our Verizon cell phones. We contacted AT&T who told us everything on their end was OK so they set up a service appointment for the following week (the problem was happening on a Sunday evening). I was unable to get ahold of a live person at Verizon. Their automated system required me to click on a link in a text message before I could continue which didn't work since I had no internet. I called my sister who lives about half an hour from me to see if her internet was working, which it was. She could chat with a Verizon person who gave several phone numbers for me to try but each one routed me back to the same automated system which sent me a text with a link to click on before I could continue. The tech my sister was chatting with finally just said I would have to wait until the next morning to get ahold of a live person.
The next morning I was having the same problem but finally managed to get ahold of a live person (I had to select a sales option to talk to a sales person so they could route me to customer service). The customer service person insisted their system was working normally and the problem was with my phone even after I explained that my wife had the same problem on her phone as well as our home internet being out. I followed all her troubleshooting steps until she told me I was going to have to do a factory reset. At that point I stopped.
My neighbor came over that afternoon. He told me that there was a small fire that burned through the main communications cable to our area and that all the landlines were down (I have VOIP so I wasn't aware of the land lines being down). He told me there were several AT&T repair vehicles working on the telecommunications line when he drove by in the morning. So at the same Verizon was telling me that the problem was on my end there were service crews making repairs to the system. Luckily, the fire was contained and didn't grow into a large fire. If I had followed the Verizon representative's instructions I could have been in a situation where I had to evacuate but had either an inoperable phone or a phone like a brand new phone with none of my contact information since it requires internet to repopulate the information.
Last edited:
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22498503/akrales_20210504_4551_0068.jpg)
