FCC says 6,500 cell sites down in four states in wake of Irene

Hurricane Irene knocked out 6,500 cellular communications sites in four states from Virginia to Vermont, where 44 percent of the sites remained down August 29, the Federal Communications Commission reported.

Neil Grace, an FCC spokesman, said 35 percent of the cell sites in Connecticut, 31 percent in Rhode Island and 25 percent in Virginia were down in the wake of the storm. Wired phone lines serving 210,700 customers were out, along with cable TV service for 1 million subscribers, Grace added. Army coordination officers continued to work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the Northeast, as Vermont faced the worst floods in 75 years due to rains spawned by Hurricane Irene and outages in the power grid that could take weeks to fix.