A lightning strike on April 26 near 141 Osage Executive Circle caused an electrical shutdown, leaving City Hall without computers or phone service for three days, according to Police Chief Frank T. Selvaggio.
While city phone lines are down, 911 and non-emergency police calls are being routed through the Jefferson County 911 Dispatch Center. Selvaggio could not provide an exact timeline for full service restoration.
Byrnes Mill is a Spectrum customer, and residents may be unable to contact city offices for several more days as recovery efforts continue following the incident.
How can a single lightning strike knock a city's vital services offline for days?
Are cloud-based systems the only way to protect essential city services from disaster?
Is this small-town outage a warning sign of America's fragile critical infrastructure?
Beyond fixing systems, how will the city rebuild public trust after this failure?
What can small towns do to afford disaster-proof infrastructure before it's too late?