Emergency communications back online following repairs to severed line at construction site
Andrew Gillies
SANTA BARBARA AND SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTIES, Calif. – Emergency communications systems, including 911 and air traffic control towers, across Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties are back online after a fiber line was cut during construction work on Tuesday.
According to the City of Santa Barbara, between 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m., a fiber optic line was cut which caused disruption that impacted emergency communications, a rocket launch, and air traffic control across two counties.
While the exact circumstances of the outage are under investigation, the City of Santa Barbara shared that the Frontier fiber line was severed by contracted workers at the De La Vina bridge replacement project.
“The incident is still under investigation so I can’t provide a lot of specific details,” said City Administrator Kelly McAdoo in response to Your News Channel’s inquiries about Tuesday’s communications outage. “I have already been in conversation with [Santa Barbara County Executive Officer] Mona Miyasato at the County about bringing cities throughout the County together to develop more redundancy in our fiber connections to these critical systems.”
Your News Channel has reached out to Lash Construction which confirmed they are the company conducting the De La Vina bridge replacement and its response provided Friday, July 25 is below:
“As a member of this community, Lash Construction understands the importance of transparency and accountability. The fiber optic communication line that was damaged on Tuesday July 22nd, 2025 at approximately 10am PST, WAS NOT marked and or identified by the Dig Alert system responsible for identifying existing utilities in Southern California. Multiple parties, including our company, are actively conducting a thorough investigation into this matter. Until the investigation is complete, we believe it would be irresponsible to speculate or draw conclusions. Our initial “no comment” response was made out of respect for the ongoing process and to avoid sharing incomplete or potentially misleading information. We remain fully committed to cooperation and will provide further updates when appropriate.”
Orange traffic cones are set up by a hole in the ground near Vernon and De La Vina that appears to be where the line was cut.
Sheriff’s Offices in both counties confirmed Wednesday morning that 911 lines are back in operation after service was restored Tuesday evening.
Anyone still having problems reaching 911 in Santa Barbara County can still text the number during an emergency or use one of the alternate numbers listed here shared the County of Santa Barbara.
The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office detailed that landline and cellular service for Frontier, Verizon, and AT&T customers was interrupted and if anyone is still experiencing issues reaching emergency dispatchers, they can call the Sheriff’s non-emergency line at 805-781-4550, option 3.
“A third-party doing construction work cut fiber lines, disrupting service in the area,” explained a Frontier spokesperson when contacted by Your News Channel.
The Santa Barbara Airport was busier than usual today with people coming and going a day later than planned due to disruptions impacts on Air Traffic Control communications.
Dennis Rose was flying home a visit with his mother when his flight was redirected.
“I was 40 minutes into the flight and I woke up to the pilot asking, kind of mentioning, I think that you all felt the big u-turn back to Salt Lake City, ” said Rose.
He said he hopes technology can be improved to prevent something similar from happening again.
Santa Barbara County’s Office of Emergency Management Director Kelly Hubbard said is showed how agencies can work together.
“It is a good reminder that Ready SBC alerts can be used for concepts other than just fire and floods,” said Hubbard, “We were able to use our registrations and those people who registered with Ready SBC alerts to notify them and let them know critical information.”
For more information visit https://www.readysbc.org/