Telephone lines cut at OPM headquarters

About 200 phone lines leading into the Office of Personnel Management were severed late last week and repair workers are still trying to repair the lines, according to agency officials and phone company representatives.

A contractor was installing a security gate near the agency's Washington headquarters last Friday when the phone cable was cut, according to Sandra Arnette, a spokeswoman for Verizon. The damage was done late in the day, and the problem was not discovered until Monday morning. Arnette said the cable is about five feet underground, and workers are still uncertain how extensive the damage is, or how long it will take to restore the phone lines.

"We have actually gone in to get access to the damaged cable … we are still in the process of digging to get to that cable," she said. "We really won't know [how to fix it] until we can reach it."

In a best-case scenario, Verizon officials hope to restore the phone service late Thursday or early Friday. That would become possible "if we find that we can work with the existing cable," Arnette said.

If the cable needs to be replaced, however, the phone lines will not be immediately repaired, according to Arnette. She could not provide a time line for getting the phone lines back up in a worst-case scenario.

OPM officials said the outage is causing an inconvenience for some workers, but is not a serious problem. Agency spokesman Scott Hatch said callers with questions about retirement, health benefits and insurance are directed to call centers in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Background investigations are being conducted at other sites.

There has been one advantage. Hatch said the phone outage has also forced some OPM workers to visit colleagues who they would usually call.

"We are seeing people whom we haven't seen in several weeks," he said.