Most internet and cell services remained down in Sitka on Friday afternoon. The outage started Thursday morning shortly after 11 a.m.
Sitkans who contacted the GCI customer service line to report the widespread outage got a message that “GCI is aware of the outage that is affecting internet and TV service within the O'Malley area in Anchorage and Sitka.”
Sitka had 4,000 cruise passengers on Thursday. Many businesses said they had to resort to cash-only transactions to make sales.
Around 2 p.m. on Thursday, the lights were on at the AT&T store in downtown Sitka, but the door was locked and a sign on the door read “Network down, No ETA.”
But not every network is down. Melissa Wileman is the public and government affairs director at Sitka City Hall. She said the city is using Starlink as a backup internet provider, and it's working right now.
Wileman said the city got some information about the outage from GCI after their IT Director reached out. She said they're working as hard as possible to get things back up and running.
Sitka’s internet outage is impacting local medical services. The regional health provider, Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, announced that until internet service is restored, Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center is canceling elective surgeries. SEARHC is also diverting emergency patients from outside communities for the time being. The emergency room, however, remains open to Sitkans in need of emergency services. Urgent Care is open, and primary care patients can attend their appointments. SEARHC anticipates appointments will take longer than usual due to the outage, and only urgent prescriptions will be filled.
The last time Sitka experienced a major internet outage was in 2016. At the time, KCAW reported that service was impacted for 12 days due to a damaged fiber optic cable at the bottom of the sea floor. So far, the reason for this outage is unclear.
This is a developing story.