Cut Communication Lines a Growing Problem

Fayette County’s 911 service went down again last Thursday after a construction crew on US 77 cut a fiber optic line.

According to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, the cut happened about eight miles north of La Grange on Thursday evening, Nov. 14. Lt. David Beyer of the Sheriff’s Office said Frontier Communications owns the line. He said the company did not send out a repair crew until Friday morning. That left the County without 911 service overnight and through the morning. The crew repaired the line and service was restored around noon on Friday. The incident came a week after another 911 outage due to a fiber cut on the same line. According to Chief Deputy Randy Noviskie of the Sheriff’s Office there have been similar disruptions to the 911 service on June 12, June 21, June 26 and July 10.

The problem has gotten so bad that the Sheriff’s Office sent a written complaint to the Texas Public Utility Commission. Frontier Communications responded to the complaint, saying that each time the line was cut by 3rd party contractors. Most of them involved the highway widening project on US 77. One of the cuts was made by a water company installing a new water tap, according to a Root Cause Analysis Report from Frontier.

“Every time we’ve experienced one of these interruptions in service, it impacts everything in the county. 9-1-1 calls have to be rerouted to Lee County, county phone lines are down, the Tax Assessor-Collector’s office can’t assist with motor vehicle transactions and residents don’t have phone and internet services,” said County Judge Dan Mueller in a statement issued Monday, Nov. 18.

“It is important however, that we assure our residents that the most important services –those of emergency response – are still in place. We have an agreement that in the event of a disruption of our 9-1-1 service, all calls are routed to Lee or Bastrop counties.” Mueller said.

That’s just what the Sheriff’s Office did last Friday. They sent a dispatcher to Lee County to ensure calls got routed to first responders here.

“Sending one of our dispatchers to Lee County allows them to handle the calls as much as possible and keeps some of the stress off our neighbors. We are fortunate to have such a great working partnership,” said Sheriff Keith Korenek.

“With the help of our neighboring counties, we are able to ensure we can respond to an emergency call no matter what – that’s something we really want our residents to know,” said Fayette County EMS Director Josh Vandever.

The Record tried contacting Frontier Communications to ask why the line keeps getting cut and what they are doing to address the problem. The company has not responded to our inquiry.