Lake Orion Community Schools and Oxford Community Schools both called off classes for Tuesday, Oct. 13, after fiber-optic cable damage along M-24 knocked out internet access and other essential systems. Repairs on the line started Monday, but the fix wasn't expected to be finished in time for the school day.
Lake Orion Community Schools said a fiber cut caused a loss of internet access across the district, according to CBS News Detroit. Oxford Community Schools, meanwhile, said the same cable damage disrupted several essential systems within its buildings. Good Shepherd Lutheran in Lake Orion also announced it would be closed Tuesday because of the outage.
Repairs Started Monday but Couldn't Beat the Clock
Crews began working on the damaged cable Monday, Oct. 12, but the station's report notes that restoration wasn't expected to be completed before Tuesday's classes were set to begin. That left both districts with little choice but to cancel in-person instruction for the day rather than risk running schools without reliable internet and other connected systems.
Lake Orion officials said more restoration details would be shared as they became available, per the same account, though it's not yet clear when service will be fully back online district-wide.
Not the First Michigan District Sidelined by a Cut Line
Fiber damage has sidelined Michigan schools before. Bloomfield Hills Schools closed for a Friday after damage to its fiber-optic network knocked out internet access, classroom technology, phone systems, HVAC controls and safety measures, according to WXYZ. That district said it could not ensure the safe and effective operation of its schools under the circumstances and, at the time, had no timeline for full restoration.
A similar outage hit Eastern Michigan University in June, when a damaged fiber-optic cable near campus took web services down for more than an hour. Merit Network support analyst Brian Arnold told The Eastern Echo that the damage was likely caused by a burning electrical line. Service began resuming around 3 p.m. that day, and a middle-school programming camp on campus kept running by switching to an offline activity while the network was down.
Those cases underscore how a single damaged line can ripple through internet-dependent systems far beyond just classroom Wi-Fi, from phones to climate controls to safety equipment. For Lake Orion and Oxford families, the immediate impact Tuesday is simpler: no school, with updates expected from each district as repair work continues.
