On Sunday, May 8, 1988, a fire broke out in the main switching room of the Hinsdale Central Office of the Illinois Bell telephone company. One of the largest switching systems in the state, the facility processed more than 3.5 million calls each day while serving 38,000 customers, including numerous businesses, hospitals, and Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway Airports. Around 4 PM, the Division Alarm Reporting Center for Illinois Bell began receiving automated reports of power failures and fire alarms at the Hinsdale Central Office, but it was nearly an hour before a technician arrived at the facility to investigate the alarms. By that point, however, smoke was pouring out of the building and telephone service had been knocked out for much of the region. In fact, the telephone technician had to flag down a passing motorist to ask him to drive to the Hinsdale Fire Department to report the blaze in person...
The fire at the telephone center had a significant impact on Hinsdale and the surrounding region as telephone service was lost for more than 40,000 local phone lines. As restoring service to the airports, hospitals, and emergency services was the priority, many residential areas were simply out of luck until new circuits, cables, and other materials could be brought in to replace the telephone equipment lost in the fire. It took Illinois Bell four weeks to completely restore telephone service for the entire affected region.
This was right around finals my frosh year of college, so didn't really clock it at the time (I was busy not studying), but did learn about the incident from a slide in one of the first telecom courses I taught circa 1994.
On a related note, the Canvas LMS that we and many other institutions use went down yesterday, finally was back up today. That impacted two programs I work with. Not the same stakes as the Hinsdale Fire, but funny that it happened around the same date.
Anywayz, still wicked busy (I shipped my very first production app for testing today!), but I had to note this one. Post title comes from our esteemed CTO, Werner Vogels.
And now, I watch the WNBA season tip off. I have missed it so...
Selah.
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