MODESTO, Calif.—An electrical fire on a 90-foot-tall cellular site damaged some network equipment belonging to Sprint Nextel Corp. CDMA affiliate UbiquiTel Inc. and Cingular Wireless L.L.C. earlier this week.
The Modesto Bee first reported the fire.
Both Cingular and Sprint Nextel representatives said that surrounding towers picked up with slack and carried the traffic that would have normally gone through the damaged site.
According to Sprint Nextel spokesman John Taylor, UbiquiTel dispatched a cell on wheels to temporary replace the network equipment; Cingular said it did the same.
“We have redundancies in place for situations like that and they worked very well in this situation,” Cingular spokesperson Lauren Garner said.
The electrical fire burned the 90-foot pole, which is owned by the city. The pole also serves as a light pole for a park baseball field, according to the Bee.
Because the pole still had an electrical current running to it, firefighters were unable to fight the flames and the tower burned all day Tuesday. The Bee reported that the cause of the fire, which scorched a nearby tree, was unknown.
“From what I understand, there was some vandalism involved at the site,” Taylor said.
