Internet down? Tree climbers up.

Who climbs trees after thunderstorms? Piedmont Broadband’s Rich Shoemaker says PBB “wore out two tree climbers” starting last Thursday (July 3), after heavy lightning storms in the region took out a large chunk of the wireless broadband company’s network (which is spread throughout much of Rappahannock and into Fauquier and Madison counties). The tree climbers were helping replace the eight radio units Shoemaker says were lost to lightning strikes and related power surges.

Not all PBB’s radios are mounted in trees; many work fine on rooftops or poles, but line-of-sight signal requirements sometimes necessitate an installation in the nearest tall oak or poplar.

“We hate these thunderstorms,” Shoemaker emailed on Monday. He said crews have been out every day since last Thursday, “and will be out . . . until we return all of our clients back up.

“Our biggest problem this time was the southern end of the network — Woodville, Hawlin and Etlan areas,” Shoemaker said. “Not only did we have outages with our units, we had an area-wide power outage on July 4th midmorning at the Castleton, Battle Mountain and Rixeyville sites.

“We have greatly improved the grounding and surge protection and have invested heavily in this area, and I believe it has been paying off, and we’re looking for even better ways to protect the equipment. However, a direct strike is what has happened this last time.”

He added: “We encourage our clients as well as all others to increase your surge protection and unplug as much as you can during these events.”