Amanda and Richard Di Donna never asked for Verizon high-speed Internet service at their Vienna home.
Even so, in March a crew working under contract for the company showed up in their back yard, digging along a public easement to lay fiber-optic cable that the company promised would bring lightning-quick computer connections to their neighborhood.
But the crew hit a problem -- literally. Workers dug into an apparently mis-marked power line running into their home, the Di Donnas were told later. The contact caused a massive power surge that shot through the house, shorting out every electrical appliance and melting almost all the wires snaking through their walls.
What followed was an ordeal to get their house and lives back in order that has not ended, the couple said. They spent more than four months in hotels and apartments with their 2-year-old son while repairs were underway. Their dog had to stay at a kennel. Amanda Di Donna spent the final months of her second pregnancy uprooted and gave birth about seven weeks before the couple finally moved back into their gutted and rebuilt house last month.
By their records, they still are owed almost $14,000 in repair costs and expenses by UtiliQuest, the company that mis-marked the electrical line and whose insurance company, they said, has paid more than $90,000 to repair damage related to the incident.
The Di Donna family's experience is perhaps one of the more spectacular examples of property and utility damage across the region as Verizon has laid new lines in much of suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia. In all, the company is working in 15 states to replace its copper network with more advanced fiber-optic lines, said Harry J. Mitchell, a spokesman for Verizon.
According to officials with regional utility companies, Verizon workers have hit water pipes 76 times in the past year in Montgomery and Prince George's counties. They have hit Washington Gas lines 288 times in Maryland and Virginia and hit Columbia Gas lines 27 times in parts of Virginia. Pepco and Dominion Virginia Power confirm their lines have been hit, sometimes causing power outages. Local governments have been collecting complaints from residents concerned about ruined lawns, wrecked sprinkler systems and torn-up driveways.
Some of the errors have been made by construction companies working under contract for Verizon. Others, like the one outside the Di Donnas' home, have been caused by other utility companies and their contractors marking their own lines incorrectly after they were alerted that Verizon was preparing to dig, as the law requires.
Amanda Di Donna said she believes that since the dig was a Verizon project, it should share part of the blame.
"Verizon is such a big company. You feel so powerless and small," she said. "They're just not concerned. . . . They let the small guy take the fall and essentially pass the buck."
Mitchell said the company is concerned. He called the Di Donnas' experience a "very unfortunate incident" but said the company's records show that UtiliQuest, a vendor hired by Dominion Virginia to mark the utility lines, was at fault and therefore is responsible for damages.
He said Verizon is committed to limiting damage caused by the 1,700 contractors burying lines in Maryland and Virginia, and the company employs dozens of inspectors to check up on their work. It provides intensive training for those construction companies as well, Mitchell said, and has been meeting weekly with utility companies to keep them apprised of where digging will take place.
