By Sara Beth Williams–
Amid widespread internet outages in the area, a local restaurant was forced to close in the afternoon on Monday following a widespread internet outage.
On Monday night, two restaurant chairs could be seen blocking the entrance to Panera Bread’s drive-thru with an attached sign indicating that the restaurant was temporarily closed due to an internet outage. Panera Bread confirmed to The Sentinel on Tuesday that the entire restaurant closed on Monday evening. The restaurant stated that they had to close because they were not able to operate their Wi-Fi.
Multiple residents throughout Citrus Heights reported on social media Monday evening that they were experiencing internet outages at their residences throughout Citrus Heights and surrounding areas, including in Carmichael, Arden, Fair Oaks, and Foothill Farms.
Xfinity outage maps on May 6 showed that outages were first reported beginning at 7:55 a.m. on Monday. By the evening, over 2,000 confirmed outages had been reported, according to Xfinity’s website.
Local news reports stated that about 19,000 Xfinity customers in the Sacramento area were without an internet connection for several hours on Monday. An Xfinity spokesperson reported to local news stations that the outage began Monday afternoon due to an internal software reboot issue.
An Xfinity representative could not confirm with The Sentinel the reason for the local outage and could not confirm the total number of outages reported in Citrus Heights specifically. The company did confirm that multiple internet outages occurred; one from 1:10 a.m. until 1:29 a.m. and another from 6:40 p.m. to 9:47 p.m., both on Monday, May 6.
Internet service was partially restored to some residents between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. Monday night. Xfinity outage maps updated at 11:16 p.m. indicated that between 500 to 2000 outages were still ongoing and that internet was expected to be restored around 12:15 a.m. Tuesday.
