SUNDERLAND — The town’s managed service provider had, by Thursday morning, recovered roughly half the emails that had been in municipal inboxes before roughly 8:45 p.m. on Nov. 19, when a transformer fire temporarily brought down Sunderland’s primary email server.
Hadley-based Paragus handles Sunderland’s information technology infrastructure, and Tim Donahue, an account manager for the company, said he was fairly confident the remaining emails would be retrieved by the weekend. A call to Paragus for an update on Friday was not returned by presstime.
“There’s a lot that goes into it,” he said. “It looks like we’re getting near the end.”
He said Paragus has had a contract with Sunderland since July 2.
Frontier Community Access Television’s live broadcast and recording of the Nov. 19 Sunderland Board of Selectmen was lost due to the server going down.
“All of a sudden, the lights started flashing,” Town Administrator Sherry Patch told The Recorder, adding that the server was back up and running within hours. “And then in the morning (Town Hall employees) came in and were like, ‘Oh my God.’
“It wreaked havoc upon the town,” Patch said a frustrated laugh.
She also said email contact lists had been lost. She said she didn’t realize how often she used them until they were gone.