A method and apparatus are described for performing a dual-carrier operation. A first timer is initiated for an anchor carrier and a second timer is initiated for a supplementary carrier. A physical channel failure may be declared on a condition that either of the timers expire before a predefined number of in-synch indication received from a layer 1 (L1) entity is counted. Uplink transmission and enhanced dedicated channel (E-DCH) operations may be stopped on a supplementary carrier associated with the physical channel failure, but may be continued on an anchor carrier that has a physical channel established. If the physical channel failure is associated with the anchor carrier, uplink transmission and E-DCH transmission operations are stopped on all carriers.