Hospital emergencies affected by Bay cable outage
Netcare The Bay Hospital issues statement indicating temporary cell phone numbers to deal with the landline loss impact
DESPITE sporadic rain throughout the night and on Saturday morning, Telkom teams have made good progress in preparation for replacing the main cable feeding 2 400 subscribers in Richards Bay.
These include CBD businesses and the municipal offices, as well as various hospital and medical services.
Workers installing new optic fibre cables on Thursday morning at the corner of East Central Arterial and the R619 ripped out the buried main cable, which was far closer to the trench surface than they believed.
It is understood the cables had been raised from a two metre depth to less than a metre below the surface when the R619 was widened.
Concerned for patient safety and emergency traumas, Netcare The Bay Hospital issued a statement on Saturday morning indicating temporary cell phone numbers to deal with the landline loss impact:
Emergency department/Trauma 076 7336638
Hospital reception 079 3392686
Manager on call 072 5410427
Ambulance 082 911.
Telkom will begin replacing some 200 metres of copper cable – trucked in overnight from Gauteng – over the next two days, but full service from the Arboretum telephone exchange is not expected to be restored until Tuesday at the earliest.
