Car Crash Knocks Out Cable TV for Super Bowl in Alexandria

ALEXANDRIA, VA -- Del Ray resident Rae Edmonson was just getting ready to sit down to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, a sporting event he hasn't missed in about 40 years, when all of a sudden his family's cable TV went out.

A temporary blip? Nope. The service was out until Monday morning.

"The timing was terrible," Edmonson said in an email to Patch. "This was the first Super Bowl I have missed in about 40 years! I spoke with Comcast this morning and they credited my account for about $23 after I asked what they could do."

The culprit? A driver hit a power pole Sunday afternoon near 510 N. Quaker Lane in Alexandria, according to a spokesman for the Alexandria Fire Department.

That knocked out power to 32 customers who were restored by 8:22 p.m., according to a Dominion spokesman; but it knocked out a much larger group of cable customers in Alexandria because the cable wires are strung on the power poles on Quaker Lane and those were damaged, a Comcast spokeswoman said. When the car hit the pole, a fire started and damaged the cable.

Some took to social media to air their distress and anger at Comcast:

In addition to the large cable outage (Comcast did not release figures on the number of homes that lost cable TV, Internet and phone service in Alexandria) and small power outage in Alexandria, there was a large power outage in the Ballston area of Arlington also Sunday during the Super Bowl, caused by a broken cross-arm, a piece of wood that holds up a utility pole. When that broke, 3,074 customers in the area lost power; 2,500 were restored by 6:24 p.m. and 547 were restored by 7:42 p.m., a Dominion spokesman said.

On Monday afternoon, Comcast emailed a statement to Patch about the outages Sunday that reads:

"On the evening of Sunday, February 5, unfortunate issues beyond our control in Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia resulted in separate service issues impacting some customers in Northern Virginia. All services have been restored.

The first involved a commercial power outage that impacted some customers in Arlington. Our teams engaged and responded immediately with back-up generators and other supplies to restore services as the power company worked to fully restore their power. Comcast service was restored a little after 6 p.m.

The second issue impacted some customers in Alexandria and Arlington due to a fire on commercial power lines that burned our fiber. Though the issue was detected immediately and multiple crews were ready and dispatched, the fire caused extensive damage to our fiber and we had to wait for access and then worked through the night on the intricate repairs.

We know how disappointing this was for customers who missed the Super Bowl and are very sorry."

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