Cell service: More phones on — no word why they failed

Cell service is coming back along with power across Northern California, but companies haven’t yet explained why their networks failed despite advance warning, pointed questions from regulators and claims in government filings by wireless operators that they were prepared.

The long outages underscored the reality that cuts to electricity also translate to a blackout of emergency communications.

On Wednesday, more than 173,000 people in 32 affected counties still didn’t have connection to phones,

internet or television, companies reported to the Federal Communications Commission. That was down from nearly 224,000 customers Tuesday and more than 450,000 Monday.

In the Bay Area, Sonoma County was hit hardest: 16.5% of cell sites were down Wednesday as the Kincade Fire continued to rage. In Napa, 10% of sites were out; in Marin it was 5%, San Mateo 2%, and Contra Costa 1.5%.

Seventeen radio stations also went out of service. And newer wired telephones that rely on internet access, like those provided by Comcast, also go out if there is no backup power.

Companies said before the shutoffs that they were prepared with permanent generators at most cell towers that last days; backup batteries at others that survive a few hours without power; and fleets of portable generators ready to deploy. But most haven’t or couldn’t explain why towers still failed — and at least one

AT&T customer got strange and misleading information in response to a complaint.

Danny Shapiro, a father of two in Lafayette who didn’t receive evacuation notices for surrounding neighborhoods during a fire Sunday until he made his way to Walnut Creek hours later, was told by an AT&T customer representative in the company’s app that power for cell sites was the municipality’s responsibility.

“It’s up to your local government unit if they have enough power to supplement the area once calamities is (sic) encountered,” the message Tuesday read. “If your government unit on that area do (sic) not have back up power, AT&T can no longer operate.”

While some Bay Area cities have their own electric utilities, Lafayette, like much of Northern California, is served by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

AT&T spokesman Jim Greer said the information was incorrect and “clearly it’s a misinformed customer service representative.” He said the company sent concerns to the customer service team and is trying to track down the representative in question.

The company said Tuesday that 97% of its cell sites were operational, but Greer could not explain why the other 3% failed.

“This is a very dynamic situation and we’re working around the clock to serve our customers,” he said. “We do afteraction evaluations of every event that we deal with as a company. These are unprecedented power outages in combination with disaster events and fires. Our focus is keeping customers connected. We learn from every event that we work and always try to make it better.”

After the first fireprevention outage this month where some service also failed, AT&T staged more generators, including some from out of state, but towers still went down. AT&T, Verizon and TMobile said this week they’re working around the clock to deploy and refuel generators at hundreds of sites across the region.

It doesn’t always work, however: Verizon spokeswoman Heidi Flato said the company can’t deploy backup power to certain sites. In some cases there’s no access — to get a power cord to a site on top of a building, for example, or to park a portable generator in tight quarters. But she couldn’t say whether that was the specific issue at sites in the Bay Area. Wildfires haven’t caused damage to the company’s infrastructure, but evacuation orders can hinder site access, she said.

Even though outage maps and shutoff times change rapidly, it was wellknown that prolonged blackouts during wildfire season were a possibility. The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates wireless companies, asked California’s five major cell carriers in September how they were preparing.

“I just thought that this was so dangerous, if I were to get in an accident, and I had a heart attack or something, it’s important to be able to make phone calls. We’re just not able to,” said Michelle Spita, in southwest Santa Rosa.

She was narrowly spared from power outages and evacuation orders this weekend — but what worried her most, she said, was that she couldn’t use her TMobile cell phone. Driving through Marin and Sonoma counties, she couldn’t make calls and in the rare cases she could get through, they dropped.

Her parentsinlaw are in their 70s and live on the east side of Santa Rosa. They didn’t have service either when they lost power Saturday — and it hadn’t been restored yet by noon Wednesday. She’s been checking on them in person every day.

Like Shapiro, the Lafayette parent, some Bay Area residents without service during power outages didn’t get evacuation notifications.

In Marin County, where almost all customers lost power Saturday and cell outages were common, Leonard Reyno didn’t get emergency alerts for the power outages or redflag warnings about high fire risk this week until he drove over the Golden Gate Bridge on his way to work in South San Francisco. He finally had his electricity restored Wednesday afternoon at his home in Mill Valley, but thousands there are expected not to regain power until late Thursday.

“Understanding the level of risk and anxiety induced when you remove people from their means of communication, that’s a big deal,” Reyno said. “How much of California’s emergency preparedness (is) dependent on cell phones and WiFi? It’s frustrating and scary, but how is it for people who have less privileges than us and are running short of cash and don’t know what’s happening?” Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench