
First, 1 Verizon employee and 3 Genuity employees are still missing, my
prayers, and I'm sure everyone else's prayers go out to their families.
No one wants to distract or impair the continuing rescue efforts in the area.


As Verizon continues its assessment of the damage, it is starting to
look worse than original reports.  Verizon hasn't filed an outage
report with the FCC, or the FCC has delayed its release.  So this is
based on Verizon's news conference and news reports.  The reports
aren't very clear in all the details.

The walls of the 140 West ST CO adjacent to the WTO Building 7 were breached
when Building 7 collapsed, and the building has flooded and the equipment
is covered with debris.  140 West St has no power.  Verizon needs to pump
out the building because it is 5 stories below ground.

Also mentioned is the Broad Street CO, which is experiencing intermittent
power problems.  The Broad Street CO supplies 80% of the New York Stock
Exchange lines, and the West Steet CO serves as the alternate CO supplying
20% of the NYSE lines.

The CO's supply 200,000 voice lines and 3 million separate private lines.
Although the NYSE had backup facilities, it looks like the disaster in
NYC is disrupting service from both CO's.  The telecommunication directors
of the exchanges have been meeting during the day.

According to news reports, Verizon left it unclear why a backup facility
somewhere else wouldn't be an adequate substitute for Wall Street's
financial community and stock trading.  According to one news report,
NYSE Chairman Grasso acknowledged that work is needed to come up with
a better telecommunications plan in the future.




