Med Group open for Business

  • Published
  • By Airman Connor J. Marth
  • 366th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
MOUNTAIN HOME AIR FORCE BASE, Idaho --  A mishap involving the sewer infrastructure construction caused a single fiber optic cable to be severed shutting down communication for the entire Gunfighter hospital for two hours on Dec. 18, 2014, at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, while services were rerouted to alternate paths.

Airmen from the 366th Communications Squadron jumped into action to repair the cable that provides networking data including pharmacy information at the intersection of Gunfighter Avenue and Mellen Drive.

"All of our in and out communication abilities were affected," said Col. Sarady Tan, 366th Medical Group commander.

The CS rerouted the severed cables functions to an alternate line while repairs were being made to the damaged cable. 

"This was a total team effort on the part of the Communications Squadron," said Maj. Robert Curran, 366th CS commander, "The Infrastructure shop was able to identify a work around to the fiber path running to the hospital and reroute services in less than two hours while the Cable Maintenance shop sprang into action and worked through the night to repair the fiber cables and put them back into service. The work that went into fixing this outage shows the hard work and ingenuity of the Airman we have in the Communications Squadron to make sure we take care of the mission."

The incident was found to be a result of inaccurate cable marking.

"When we began laying down sewage lines for the new base housing, we cut right into the cable," said Bill Davis, Knife River job foreman. "The cable was way off mark due to some nearby trees."

The hospital felt minimal impacts during the outage and is now fully operational.  The sewer construction will continue as scheduled with a completion date aimed at the end of January.