Internet service is back in the Tri-Cities. So what happened?

Internet, phone and cable service returned early Friday to the Tri-Cities after a dump truck busted a fiber optic line.

People, businesses and government agencies across the Tri-Cities were without service for most of Thursday, according to numerous Facebook comments, calls and tweets.

The dump truck, which had an extended bed, damaged a fiber optic line around 11 a.m. Thursday, said Bret Picciolo, the senior director of communications for Charter Communication’s northwest region.

Picciolo wouldn’t say where the line was and didn’t know how many people lost service, which was restored by 3 a.m. Friday.

The outage stopped businesses and government agencies, made schoolwork hard to finish and enraged gamers.

Most of the complaints focused around Richland and West Richland.

Benton County Fire District 4 and the City of West Richland tweeted that they couldn’t get calls.

Repairing the fiber optic line is painstaking work, Picciolo said. When a line is torn down or severed like this, each strand individually needs to be patched together.

“In this particular case, the fiber was damaged in multiple locations,” he said.

A nearby coaxial cable also was damaged, complicating the repair efforts, Picciolo said.

Charter Communications owns Spectrum; in 2016 it was reported to be the second largest cable provider in the United States with more than 25 million customers in 41 states.

This story was originally published September 28, 2018 at 9:51 AM.