And don't ever forget http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVhhu5OjMf8
-Blast

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This event brings back memories. In about 1983 or so, my wife and I were driving back to our farmhouse in Iowa City from Davenport over on the Mississippi River. It's about a 65 mile journey. When we got outside Davenport on I-80, my wife and I noticed this brilliant white pillar of light on the western horizon, like a monstrous flashpot explosion but steady and unwavering. This pillar of burning white light got bigger and more brilliant the closer we got to Iowa City, and we finally realized it was within a couple miles of our house. We switched on the car radio and heard the news. A truck had backed into the main valve at the giant underground natural gas storage facility east of the house. The trucked had knocked the valve completely apart, and when the truck pulled off the wreckage, sparks ignited the gas forming the blow torch we had seen, and eventually also heard, from 65 miles away. For the next month, there was an 80 foot high deafening blowtorch coming out of the ground near our place. It was so hot, they couldn't even get near the place to attempt any shut off or capping operation. There was nothing they could do but let the whole thing burn itself out. Evacuation? Nope. It was Iowa.

This from USA Today article on the fire ( here ). Emphasis mine.

"Robert Hansen lives two blocks from the epicenter: "At first it sounded like a jet engine, and I thought there's no place we can run. We're dead. Then I heard the explosion. There were balls of fire going up in the sky like in the Wizard of Oz. We had the car pointed out in the driveway, and the kids and the dogs inside ready to go. But the fire didn't get to us. … I hooked up our old Ma Bell telephone because our cellphones were dead. They were useless."

If taken literally, that's different than capacity-overload. I would've thought the opposite ... landline dead, cellphone functional.

What am I missing?

Your missing that the WTC was one of the largest cell sites in the world - Plus they were totally overloaded

KG2V, Wrong disaster -- San Bruno not WTC. I do though suspect the cell towers were overloaded.

Ah - San Bruno, they lost a cell site too - and probably lost the land line to others

Actually, that's kind of a weird circumstance...he had landline service...but just didn't have phones plugged in until the explosion? Hmmm, I'm assuming that one tidbit left out of this story is that their power was knocked out (or turned off), too, which then killed their cordless telephone...which is why they had to plug in a corded telephone to dial out.

But back to the original question--I don't think it's too surprising to have a situation where the cell service gets knocked out while the guy's landline service still works. Don't forget that a cell tower is basically a radio node of a big landline network of its own. If you knock out a cell tower or disrupt the phone line connecting to that tower, you can lose service in an area. Or maybe the tower lost power when the neighborhood went dark and it's possible that it didn't have any power backup to keep operating, like a battery or generator.

We don't expect to grab anything other than the kids if a crane falls on our house.

I was in a hotel fire, and I still had the chance to grab my glasses, a flashlight and shoes. In a dorm fire I grabbed my keys, which had my ID and some money in it.

At home, if I'm in my bedroom I might be able to grab up wallet and keys. If I'm leaving through the garage, my wife's BOB is by the door.

If I get out bare butt naked but alive and with my family intact, that's good enough.