Phone service down in certain coastal areas

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (AP) - The 27,000 homes and businesses on the San Francisco Peninsula that lost phone service after a manhole fire Monday were still disconnected Tuesday.

The phone company offered 300 cellular phones and extra public pay phones to help with the shortages in South San Francisco and other parts of San Mateo County. City officials decided what emergency personnel would receive the phones.

The pay phones were hooked up to repaired lines, which could have been routed to homes but would not have served as many people, said Pacific Bell spokesman John Britton.

The fire in the Pacific Bell manhole happened in San Bruno, when workers at the Bay Area Rapid Transit extension project were removing steel supports from the construction site, Britton said. A welder's torch is believed to have caused the blaze, he said.

Twenty-seven Pacific Bell cables were destroyed in the fire, and Pacific Bell officials have promised that crews will work around the clock to repair the damage. Still, officials say that could take several days.

Crews were working on splicing lines in three manholes Tuesday, including the one where lines were destroyed in the fire. Workers enlarged one manhole so it could accommodate seven members of the repair crew instead of two.