Web posted Wednesday, July 12, 2000 5:23 a.m. CT

Phone outage quiets eastern N.M.

CLOVIS, N.M. - Long-distance telephone service and emergency 911 service were down for a couple of hours Tuesday afternoon throughout a large stretch of eastern New Mexico, Clovis Deputy Chief of Police Bill Carey said.

Carey said US West notified the Clovis Police Department that a crew had accidentally damaged a major phone line and knocked out everything except local service from Portales to Tucumcari, including Cannon Air Force Base, Clovis and Texico.

The outage, which began shortly after 2 p.m. MDT Tuesday, temporarily affected everything from Internet usage to merchants who could not obtain long-distance verification for credit cards.

Police officials quickly got the word out via local radio and emergency broadcasts and set up alternate local phone lines to receive what otherwise would have been calls to 911, Carey said.

US West worked to reroute phone lines, and by 4:30 p.m. MDT, callers were able to make long-distance calls and 911 service was restored, officials said.

http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/071200/new_phone.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 12, 2000