NEHRP Clearinghouse
- Title
- Economic Consequences of the Hinsdale, Illinois Bell Fire of May 8, 1988.
- File
- PB90119777.pdf
- Author(s)
- Wiggins, J. H.
- Source
- National Science Foundation, Washington, DC. Directorate for Engineering., September 5, 1989, 40 p.
- Abstract
- On Sunday, May 8, 1988, a fire swept through Illinois Bell's telecommunication switching facility located in Hinsdale, Illinois. The station is the major gateway through which local and long-distance calls are routed for 30 other central stations. That left 38,000 people, including over 3,500 businesses, without telephone and data communication links and 475,000 more customers with limited service. The results of the disabled hub caused lost revenues, increased costs, inconvenience and lost confidence in a service hitherto largely taken for granted. Restoring service to full capacity took over a month. Because earthquake and other nature hazards could have caused the fire and the resulting losses just as easily, the earthquake research section of the Critical Engineering Systems Division at the National Science Foundation thought it important to study the loss and its higher order economic consequences. Economic losses from a major earthquake in a heavily populated area such as Los Angeles, California have only been estimated for the primary damage caused to structures. Secondary and higher order economic losses have been estimated only on a sporadic basis so that the total consequence of a major earthquake has never been fully evaluated. The study is intended to bring a part of the economic loss puzzle to light.
- Keywords
- Emergency preparedness; Fire losses; Damage; Disasters; Fires; Economic impact; Telephone systems; Earthquakes