How Pacific Bell Prepared for West Coast Earthquakes - AT&T Archives

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Any Day Without Warning gives an inside look at the preparations that Pacific Bell had made and continued to make for a major disaster.

The film gives in-depth details about how the phone company would recover from a major earthquake, including the resources the company would draw on for restoration of any service taken out by a disaster. It's meant to reassure the film's viewers that the phone company was as prepared as it could be, with extensive contingency plans, ability to mobilize phone workers from across the entire country, and squadrons of mobile phone centers on call.

Another major part of disaster recovery, is how a NOC (network operations center) monitors the phone grid to see which areas are out, and where to reroute calls. The film looks at a regional west coast NOC, including the huge switching centers that are the hubs of the telephone grid, which have been seismically reinforced repeatedly (using new technologies) over the years to anticipate terrible quakes.

Since this film was made in 1979, there have been only two earthquakes in California considered "major": the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, and the 1994 Northridge quake. As reported in a number of sources, the damage to the phone company facilities and equipment was limited during Loma Prieta, and any failures of the phone system were the result of backup power systems failing, or insufficient backup power. The call volume to the 415 and 408 area codes on the day after the quake as enormous—more than 27 million calls, when the usual daily volume was around 3.5 million. And 9.5 million of those calls reached their destination; basically the system was stretched to its limit at the time, and the company found out what that limit was. For the Northridge quake a few years later, the damage to the telephone network in the area was relatively minimal—less than 1% of facilities in the immediate area was impaired, and the network never went down. At the time of that quake, Pacific Bell performed regular earthquake drills for employees. Today, AT&T maintains an extensive disaster recovery team, that perform scheduled recovery exercises around the world a number of times per year.

Writer and Director: Dan Weisburd Producer: Elaine Simone for the ElDan Company

Footage Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

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