EMP in Twilight Zone

At approx 13:45, Monday Nov 28, 2005, my UPS clicked over to battery and right back to grid power. I thought nothing of it. Moments later, my fixed wireless session dropped, nothing at all from the tower. After some cursory troubleshooting, I picked up my telephone to call Xplornet tech support, only to be met with a loud hum on the line. A quick verification indicated that this hum was on all 3 phone lines at the demarcation point.

Looked like someone set off an EMP in twilight zone.

Turns out Hydro went down in some parts of LaSalle and Ahmurstburg at 13:45. Xplornet’s wireless tower was powered off the grid, as were several critical sections of Bell’s network, and so they went down as well.

I took a drive (outside the blast area), and found a working payphone. From there calls were made to Bell Repair and Xplornet tech support, the latter of which was actually helpful. Wireless service was back up in under an hour, my phone lines continue to hum.

It’s going to be a fun evening of “No Dial Tone? WTF?!?” and “No Sync? WTF?!?” at work tonight.