How To Incompetently Not Find A Water Main

At about eight o’clock yesterday morning, my phone line went dead. Obviously, this brought down my ADSL service with it.

This isn’t entirely uncommon – given the age of the copper phone lines in my street – (predominantly installed in the 1950’s when the estate was established) – and the slightly down hill nature of my street, when it rains the Telstra pits often fill up with water and short all the phone lines until the water drains away.

Except it wasn’t raining yesterday, so I was scratching my head.

I wasn’t home at the time, but I could see from tools provided by my ISP that the ADSL was down, and calling my home number gave a busy signal.

I did have a theory though.

In September, we received a notice from our local water authority, Barwon Water, that a company named Infratec would be, between “early” and “late” October, connecting temporary water mains in our street while the actual water main was replaced.

There have been many incidents of ruptured mains in our street over the last few years, so this seemed like a good idea.

They never actually showed up for the first time until late October. They connected up all the temporary water pipes – (hoses running down the street and into each water meter) – and in the process of the work managed to sever a gas main.

Incompetency number one.

They weren’t seen again until yesterday – and of course we are now in the middle of November, some weeks after the work was supposed to be finished.

Given they showed up yesterday morning at about the same time as my phone line went dead, you can probably see where this is going.

It has become apparent that they have severed the phone lines in a number of places.

Incompetency number two.

Here’s a hole in the ground in front of a house a little up the street. See the severed lead-in phone line to that house? (Click photo for a larger view).

Here’s another picture of the same hole, showing clearly where they have pre-identified the two phone lead-in lines emanating from the Telstra pit – (which still has ‘PMG’ on it, showing its age) – including one that leads directly into the hole.

Yet they still dug the hole, knowing the line was there, and severed it. And as you’ll note from the first photo, they didn’t manage to actually find a water main in that hole.

Incompetency number three.

So seriously, what the ‘eff Infratec? Are you really that bad?

Even if Telstra fix the lines today, how confident am I that Infratec won’t dig another hole and sever some more phone lines in the street as the work progresses over the coming weeks?

Not very.

UPDATE: 20/11/2012 13:02: The phone line was restored at around 10:50am this morning. Given Infratec’s record so far, lets see how long it takes them to do it again as they move along the street!