At least 20,000 East Bay Comcast customers in Richmond, Berkeley and beyond lost internet, TV and other services Sunday after vandals in Richmond cut through multiple lines of fiber optic cables.
Comcast said most customers had service back by that afternoon, but some outages continued until past noon on Monday.
“Unfortunately, yesterday’s vandalism incident is one of several occurrences that has happened this year,” Comcast spokesperson Jon Koriel wrote in an email Monday. A rise in Richmond incidents, including one involving AT&T equipment, prompted Contra Costa County law enforcement officials to hold a press conference in September to discuss the rise in copper thefts and their efforts to catch the culprits.
Comcast provides Xfinity internet service to many in the East Bay. Koriel said he couldn’t say exactly where in Richmond the vandalism occurred for safety reasons.
“Comcast technicians were on site for most of the day and began working immediately to restore services to our customers — and all services have now been restored,” Koriel said Monday.
“We are also continuing to collaborate with local authorities to determine the cause of these repeated incidents and to prevent further acts of vandalism from occurring,” Koriel said.
Richmond police said they received a report Sunday afternoon of stolen copper cable in the 2500 block of Bissell Avenue and have reached out to Comcast to see if it was related to the outage.
The thefts can have serious consequences. A man believed to be trying to steal copper wiring was found dead inside a Richmond manhole in August. And a theft in Pinole, on June 22 along San Pablo Avenue, disabled the 911 communications dispatch system, affecting somewhere between 75,000 to 100,000 residents in that city and in Hercules and San Pablo, according to El Cerrito Police Chief Paul Keith. Two men were arrested, and it took AT&T about a week to restore the lines.
