Residents of portions of the Mendenhall Valley in Juneau, as well as Haines and Skagway have been dealing with weak or no cell service this week after a fiber line was severed during Juneau’s destructive glacial outburst flood on Aug. 13.
The flood, triggered by the release of water from Suicide Basin into the Mendenhall River, damaged critical communications infrastructure, leaving major carriers scrambling to restore service to northern Southeast Alaska. Customers with AT&T, Verizon, GCI, and other providers have reported widespread outages and interruptions. Service has been impacted on the Back Loop Road in Juneau, where the Mendenhall Back Loop Bridge was also damaged by the flooding, with repairs scheduled to start Saturday.
AT&T customers in Skagway are expected to remain without service until approximately Aug. 28. Other carriers have not provided clear restoration timelines but have acknowledged that the fiber break is to blame.
Both Haines and Skagway rely heavily on the single fiber route through Juneau for connectivity. The outage has not only left residents without reliable mobile service but also raised concerns about public safety and communications in the event of emergencies. 911 calls in Skagway will still reach the local police station.
The Aug. 13 flooding in Valley neighborhoods along the Mendenhall River was mitigated by large Hasco barriers put in place that prevented overflow to a certain extent, but may have made the main channel of the river more powerful and damaging to the cable that runs across it near the mouth of the river.