Weather Related Issues: Thanks for your patience

I want to thank each of you for your patience during the recent unprecedented weather that has gripped our region. During this time, the College was impacted on a number of fronts including frozen and broken pipes in various areas of the campus as well as the loss of power and Internet services.

First Energy, the power provider for this region, suffered a number of outages that affected many of our communities. The last outage was a planned one that allowed First Energy to upgrade its local substation to help reduce (hopefully eliminate) the frequency of outages. Most recently Frontier Communications, the major telecommunications provider in the State of West Virginia, had a number of outages that affected its ability to provide Internet services to thousands of customers in the Northern Panhandle of the state. The most recent outage of yesterday and last evening was due to a splice in fiber optic lines located on Rt. 88 South.

Frontier technicians spent yesterday and all evening in a wooded area under tents heated by propane heaters to repair a section of line with 36 different fiber connections. While we were unhappy with the lack of Internet connectivity, and we have shared those concerns with Frontier representatives, we also recognize the difficult conditions under which their employees had to work in order to repair the damaged fiber lines. Our Information Technology staff is currently implementing a plan to add a redundancy layer to our ISP network to ensure that at a minimum, we are able to continue to have access to email during any future outages. Although these backup systems are not in place yet, we have begun the planning process and expect to have the implementation completed in a timely manner.

Finally, as I thank each of you for your patience, I would be remiss if I did not thank Ted Williams, Director of the Physical Plant, and his entire team who have worked long hours to ensure that campus services remained operational. When you see Ted and other members of the physical plant staff, please thank them for their hard work and dedication to Bethany.

Now let’s hope spring arrives early this year!