Construction mishap disrupts phones

Phone service to as many as 60,000 Embarq Corp. customers, including all state offices in Southern Nevada, will be disrupted for as long as two days because of a construction mishap, the phone company said Wednesday.

Embarq, the dominant local telephone exchange serving Southern Nevada, lost service Wednesday morning when a construction equipment operator accidentally cut through underground phone lines.

Full restoration of phone service may take two days, spokeswoman Vicki Soares said. She called it the biggest telephone outage she could recall in 11 years at the telephone company here.

An equipment operator working for Wells Cargo Construction, which was laying a new sanitary sewer line, accidentally broke through a plastic and concrete conduit with copper-wire cables and fiber optic lines at Stewart Avenue and North Seventh Street.

The break interrupted mobile phone service, long-distance land-line service and Internet service for the eastern area of Las Vegas to Boulder City and Laughlin, said Scott Mitchell, Embarq director of network operations.

The phone line accident didn't interrupt 911 emergency calls but prevented calls to nonemergency lines at police offices, Metro Police spokesman Jay Rivera said.

Daniel Stockwell, director of the state Information Technology department in Carson City, said he lost communication links to all state offices in Southern Nevada.

All phone service to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Las Vegas was interrupted in the Las Vegas Valley, Laughlin and Pahrump, DMV spokesman Tom Jacobs said. DMV offices in Mesquite were not closed because they connect to the state's servers via a different fiber optic line.

DMV has no plans to penalize anyone who missed a payment deadline because of the communication problem, Jacobs said.

Embarq is giving affected federal, state and local government offices top priority for restoring phone service through repairs or rerouting lines, Soares said.

City public works spokeswoman Debby Ackerman said the intersection of Stewart and Seventh Street will remain closed through the weekend as crews "work around the clock" to fix the severed cables. The intersection should reopen Sunday, she said.

The $3.4 million sewer rehabilitation project, which stretches on Stewart, from Las Vegas Boulevard to Maryland Parkway, began in October and was expected to finish in the spring.

Drivers should use Ogden Avenue, Mesquite Avenue or Bonanza Road as alternatives for east-west travel and Las Vegas Boulevard as an alternative for north-south travel.

The Public Utilities Commission could fine a construction company up to $1,000 a day for repeated or willful violations of rules governing digging near underground utility lines, utilities commission spokesman Sean Sever said. For merely negligent utility line breaks, the maximum penalties is $200 a day, Sever said.

"I truly don't see any kind of malicious intent," Soares said.

Lines used by Verizon Wireless were also cut, causing a temporary outage for customers in Boulder City and Laughlin, spokeswoman Jenny Weaver said.

Contact reporter John G. Edwards at jedwards@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0420. Contact reporter Francis McCabe at roadwarrior@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2904.