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Verizon's Broad Street Central Office in Lower Manhattan
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This building near the tip of Lower Manhattan was occupied by New York Telephone from the late 1920s before the company became part of Verizon. In addition to office space, it houses equipment to route data worldwide.
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A security guard checks in visitors at the Broad Street office's lobby, which has been turned into a construction zone.
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Christopher Levendos, Verizon Executive Director of Operations, walks down a previously-flooded stairway leading to the cable vault.
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The roughly 90,000 cubic foot cable vault houses both decades-old copper wiring and modern fiber optics. Since the building remains off the grid, it is lit only by temporary lighting.
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In some areas, Verizon crews used an infrared camera, normally reserved for steam lines, to spot damaged areas of copper wiring. In one pass, crews could easily identify damaged splice points by the heat given off when the electrified wire met water.
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The insulation around a splice point is revealed, here, after workers removed the casing full of water. It remains wet to the touch.
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A tangle of copper wiring lays exposed at another damaged splice point. Air pumped into these lines would typically keep water out, but the pumps that feed them succumbed to the storm surge.
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One of 13 points where cabling enters the vault has had many of its thick copper cables cut away to make space for new fiber optics inside orange tubing.
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Much of the copper wiring inside the vault was installed decades ago. At an older splice point, groupings are marked with hand-written paper labels.
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The cable vault at the Broad Street Central Office is about 15 feet deep, and spans an area 150 feet long and 40 feet wide. The storm surge filled it to the top for nearly two days.
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After a false alarm caused by exhaust from a generator making its way inside the cable vault, workers waited on the sidelines awaiting the all-clear.
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Over 100 workers — about half from Verizon — are working on repairing the site. The rest include some from the local power utility (Con Ed), and contractors.
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Several streets at the far southern tip of Manhattan are still closed in areas flooded two weeks earlier to make space for manhole cover access, generators, and pumps.
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Contractors cut open a hole in the sidewalk to allow direct access to the cable vault from above, and to help clear the air in the space.
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Wire crews literally pull old cabling out using trucks, and thread new fiber optics back through the space previously used by copper.
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Sandbags still surround the building, though they failed to hold back the nearly 15-foot storm surge.
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Two large generators in trailers power the central office, though multiple smaller ones surround the building to power equipment.
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In normal circumstances, the Broad Street central office deals with water due to its low elevation. Its systems couldn't cope with Hurricane Sandy's storm surge.
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Air pumps near the cable vault maintain air pressure in the cabling to keep them dry. These pumps failed when the storm surge partially submerged them.
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Workers have set up substantial infrastructure around the building for support, cutting off many streets.
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One of the two trailer-sized generators that powers switching equipment inside the building to keep FiOS services running.
