Flood puts voice mail on hold

A flood in the basement of Liberal Arts Building 3 Sunday left the Cal State Long Beach phone and voice mail systems crippled around the campus.

Although most phones were active by Monday, voice-mail systems continue to be unavailable.

Problems with the voice and data-communications are expected to continue all week, said Mary Ann Dase, director of network and telecommunications services on campus.

The phone outage occurred at 3 p.m. Sunday after water flooded the basement from burst pipe.

The flood occurred from a burst in a back-flow device in the basement boiler room, which is two rooms removed from the phone system, said Scott Charmark, associate vice president of Facilities Management.

Between the boiler room and the telecommunications system is a high-voltage switch room which powers all of the Liberal Arts Building, the KLON Building and the Lecture Halls.

Charmark said Facilities Management shut down the high voltage room before any damage could occur.

When the flood system caused the phone system to go down, temporary equipment was brought in immediately, Dase said.

Representatives from Ericson, the company from which CSULB purchased its phones, responded immediately and worked through the night to fix the problems, Dase said.

"We were able to get about 80 percent of the phones on campus up and running with the replacement systems," she said. Dase said she cannot estimate when the voice-mail system will be working again. Because of the outage all messages left in voice-mail boxes over the weekend were lost, at least for the time being.

John Paul of Costa Mesa-based Phoneby, the company in charge of CSULB's voice-mail system, said the company is making quick progress and that a new system will be installed.