City phone outage stretches into second day
The city of Forest Grove's phone woes continued Tuesday, but things were looking better than on Monday.
12:10 p.m. Update: Calls placed to the library, city, and police main line all worked just after 12 p.m.
Original story below:
The city of Forest Grove's phone woes continued Tuesday, but things were looking better than on Monday.
Phone calls placed to the library, the main police line, and the main city line were met with the same message:
"I'm sorry, that extension cannot be reached," an automated voice recited around 10:15 a.m.
But some departments could be reached, including the Public Works Department, and city staff told News in the Grove that internal department-to-department calls were working as of Monday evening.
Forest Grove Assistant City Manager and Finance Director Manager Paul Downey laid the initial blame for the outage on what he described as an "internal power problem" during an in-person conversation with News in the Grove on Monday evening.
"It took all day to resolve," Downey said.
It was, in fact, not resolved. While staff can call each other, city residents trying to dial some city departments cannot as of Tuesday morning.
911 and non-emergency dispatch remain unaffected.
A power outage that took electricity out and damaged utility infrastructure in Cornelius for much of the day did not appear to be related to Forest Grove's phone issues.
