Update: Service Restored After Fire At Verizon Transfer Station

MOUNT VERNON, NY — City officials in Mount Vernon say a weekend fire at an underground Verizon facility briefly disrupted emergency 911 services. Emergency calls are again being answered, but as many as 21,000 customers in Mount Vernon, Yonkers and Bronxville lost phone/internet/cable service on Friday. On Saturday, 900 business and residential customers were still waiting for service to be restored.

UPDATE: At 7:12 p.m. Mount Vernon Mayor released a statement confirming that phone/internet/cable service has been restored and should be back online for any customers affected by the fire-related outages.

"Verizon experienced a fire in its Mount Vernon facility," Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard said in a statement on Saturday. "Yesterday, all service was down. Phone, internet, cable, as well as our 911 service. 911 service is back up. They have begun to restore services so some people are experiencing return of your internet, or your phones, or your cable or a combination thereof. They are working around the clock. They have brought in many restoration crews from around the region so they are working around the clock."

Patterson-Howard was on hand to tour the fire-damaged site Saturday morning. There was a fire inside that damaged and destroyed cables and Verizon is working to splice and repair them, the mayor explained. The necessary repair work was complicated by the fact that Verizon said it would have to disconnect the service grids for most of Mount Vernon shortly after midnight in order to fully restore service.

Verizon first reported the outages to city officials on Friday evening. Verizon says a fire in the main transfer station caused the issues. The underground fire started at the hub on 6th Ave. in Mount Vernon. The company says credit will be provided to businesses and residential customers impacted by the “unforeseen circumstances.”