ET Phone Home? Wait a Few Hours

Kelly Black grabbed the phone after Thursday’s earthquake, but it took an hour for the 17-year-old Mission Viejo resident to reach his friend in Whittier.

“It didn’t ring, and there were tons of people on the line, like a party line,” Black said.

The problem was that in the Mission Viejo area, there were 17 times more phone calls than normal made after Thursday’s earthquake.

“As you know, the first thing people do when an earthquake hits is reach for their phone when they come out from under their desk,” Pacific Bell spokesman Craig MacDonald said.

Pacific Bell had no overall figures on the increase of outgoing phone traffic, but MacDonald noted that in central and west Anaheim, a switching box serving 58,800 customers routed almost a call per person for just over an hour following the temblor.