Accident causes loss of phone service
A large box truck tore down a large telephone feed line leaving as many as 200 Luzerne Township residents without phone service overnight until Monday. According to Fayette County 911 supervisor Scott Dolan, a box truck hit a large telephone feed line at the intersection of Reighard Avenue and High Street (the entrance of South Hills Terrace) Sunday at 2 p.m. and fled the scene before emergency officials arrived.
Verizon spokeswoman Sharon Shaffer said Monday that a total of 200 residents were without service Sunday. She said Verizon had crews “working around the clock” to restore service.
Service was restored to some residents by Monday afternoon, but Shaffer expected some residents to be without service until Monday night.
Some residents in the area say they were not aware of what had happened to their phone.
Lois Henck of Hiller said her service was restored by 2 p.m. Monday.
Henck said the down lines were an inconvenience, causing her to conduct business in person rather than on the phone as she normally would.
Henck didn’t realize that she didn’t have phone service until 6 p.m. Sunday evening.
When she did realize it, she said she immediately visited the homes of a couple of friends before she found someone at home and found that they too were without phone service.
“I didn’t have any explanation of what was going on, no one did, people were left out,” she said.
Henck said she was only inconvenienced by not having phone service, but for some, the down lines caused a panic.
Henck said a friend of hers whose phone had not been affected by the down line, thought something had happened to her blind uncle, who lost service to his phone.
“She kept calling him and when he didn’t answer, she thought something was wrong. She had to drive to his house to check on him. He was OK,” she said.
But Henck said if an emergency had happened, people wouldn’t know what to do.
“What if someone had an emergency, how would they know what to do?”
Dolan, who is also the fire chief at Hiller Volunteer Fire Department, said in case of an emergency, people should use the emergency call box outside the Hiller Fire Department and wait there until help arrives. He said to pull the lever to sound the alarm.
He also said 911 can be reached by any cell phone either activated or deactivated.