A DANGEROUS PHONE SITUATION

A potentially dangerous situation occurred on P.E.I. on the weekend of Jan. 14-17. During that period around 9,000 Maritime Electric customers were without power. Our household was one of them and we were very cold by the time the power was restored at least 16 hours later.

But that was not the problem. The problem was that our land line telephone was dead. Why did this happen? Many on P.E.I. still use a land line phone; and many of them are seniors. This means that should an emergency occur we have no way to contact help.

The first time that I am aware that this happened previously was when post-tropical storm Dorian hit. Our power and our phone were cut at exactly the same time. Our power was restored about 40 hours later. However, it was a full 24 more hours before the land line phone was restored — and I understand that it was connected to the power outage.

Our local Women’s Institute tried in vain to determine why the loss of telephone service and the electricity were connected, as this was a new occurrence. There was communication with Bell Aliant, the P.E.I government and the federal government. The answers we received were not understandable and obviously nothing has changed.

If there was a change in technology that connects the two — phone and electricity — then I suggest that “they” go back to the old reliable technology. I am not aware that there were any disasters because the phone lines were dead during this power outage, but could someone please fix this problem before there is a disaster??

Sylvia Matheson,

Oyster Bed Bridge, P.E.I.