Contractor damages port fiber lines in Spokane County

Some of the Port of Whitman’s fiber lines that run up to Spokane on Spotted Road near the Spokane Airport were damaged in January while a construction company was working.

While the company was excavating the fiber in order not to hit it, a rock fell on the exposed line and ended up pinching and crushing the line in two areas.

On the following day, the group was cutting into the vault with a sawzall and cut into the fiber on accident as well. No additional damage was done by the sawzall, as it cut in between the two crushed locations, but the pinched and cut fiber had to be spliced.

Splicing is the process of connecting two of the cut fibers end to end in such a way that little to no light is lost at the splice point.

Not all the fiber that was damaged had live traffic, but if the repairs hadn’t been made to them, the damage might have gone unrecognized until the fiber was put to use.

“All’s well now,” said Kara Riebold, chief operating officer at the Port of Whitman at the end of the report.