ALPENA — A suspected lightning strike over the weekend is believed to be the cause of a failure of the City of Alpena’s phone system at City Hall and at Suez, the city’s utility contractor.

The phone outage affected the ability of city staff to connect computers to the proper networks.

City staff noticed the systems were down Monday morning and were able to restore computer operations by Monday afternoon, but the phone system will be down for at least a portion of today and possibly beyond.

The city shares a phone system with Alpena County, which was not impacted at any of its facilities. The city’s Public Works and Public Safety departments also were unaffected.

According to Assistant Engineer Steve Shultz, thunderstorms that produced lightning likely destroyed switches that were protected by surge protectors.

“It is pretty crazy the way everything happened,” Shultz said. “All of the switches that got damaged were behind uninterruptible power sources and protected, but still got hit. It’s weird, because the surge protectors are still good, but switches are damaged.”

Shultz said the damage spread to a pair of computers and destroyed their network cards.

“The power just found its way through,” he said.

Shultz said he is sorting through the warranty for the parts and has had communications with the city’s reseller. He hopes the parts can be sent overnight and installed today. He said he couldn’t say for sure, though, when the phones would be operational again.

“Other than the phones, we are totally up and running and all of our computers services are online,” he said. “The big concern was the tax payments and cash receipting for things in the Clerk’s Office. It’s all back up and running now though.”

Computer service was restored and email communications are up and running, so residents can contact the offices at City Hall. The building is also open. People are encouraged to contact City Hall staff via email or in person.

“For the most part, we can handle everything, except taking phone calls,” Shultz said.

Steve Schulwitz can be reached at 989-358-5689 at sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ss_alpeanews.com.