Font ResizeLAS CRUCES - It could've been the perfect time to pull off a big heist.
Instead, calm prevailed over calamity as Las Cruces was affected Tuesday by a major communications failure. Two Qwest Communications fiber-optic cables were severed at a construction site 19 miles south of Socorro, about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, and at another construction site near Tijeras, just east of Albuquerque. The cuts shut down telephone, Internet and most other communications services for thousands of New Mexicans for more than three hours Tuesday.
"I couldn't even begin to tell you approximately how many customers were affected," said Mark Molzen, a Qwest spokesman in Arizona. "The two cuts were totally separate, completely independent from each other."
But telephone and e-mail services were slowly restored shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday, and Internet access was available in most areas about 30 minutes later.
From Lordsburg to Carlsbad, Socorro to Sunland Park - and everywhere else in between - there was no or very limited communications service. Unless you had a cellular telephone, there was no way to talk, surf the Internet, read and respond to e-mail or cell phone text messages. There was another glitch; depending on your cell phone service you either had spotty service or no service at all.
"It's created a major problem with our emergency dispatch service," said Assistant City Manager Robert Garza. "There were numerous calls to Mesilla Valley Regional Dispatch Authority (MVRDA) that
Ultimately, four telephone lines - which included two cellular telephone lines - were established to handle emergency calls to MVRDA. Molzen said that temporary emergency dispatch lines were also put into operation in Grant and Luna counties.
Garza said extra police were called out to patrol city streets and to show residents there was a greater police presence. The increase in police was also done to help mitigate any problems caused during afternoon rush-hour traffic. Traffic lights were not affected by the outage, so police did not have to direct traffic.
Numerous Las Cruces businesses experienced problems because they weren't able to use credit and debit card machines, which rely on network connections, and their phone service quit.
Some posted signs during the outage, notifying customers that their machines were down.
Vita-Man, a nutrition shop on El Paseo Road, saw its credit and debit card machine stop working before 4:30 p.m., said Jim Adkisson, a sales associate at the shop. Business wasn't impacted because customers began paying in cash or check, he said, and the store resorted to a carbon copy device that makes an impression of the card number.
Adkisson said the outage was somewhat of an inconvenience, but customers' reactions helped.
"The customers are very understanding," he said.
The outage also delayed the posting and release of final student grades for the fall semester at New Mexico State University.
"To faculty, due to the outage, grade submission deadline has been extended until 5 p.m. (today)," said an e-mail sent by NMSU to all faculty, staff and students. "Long-distance (telephone) services are currently down. Telephone connectivity to cell provider is spotty. NMSU Las Cruces Internet traffic is being re-routed via our secondary Internet provider. However, connectivity to some of our other campuses is being affected."
The sudden loss of communication services was hard for some residents to deal with.
"It just goes to show just how much our society has come to rely on communications technology," said Ryan Garcia, a Do-a Ana Community College student. "Normally this time of the day (about 4 p.m. Tuesday), I'd be on my (cell) phone sending out texts, but all of a sudden everything stopped. Nothing, no texts, no messages, no Internet, nada, nothing. It was pretty weird."
Despite the outage, communications between emergency dispatchers and hospitals operated well. Audrey Hartley, spokeswoman for MountainView Regional Medical Center, said emergency communications operations were put into effect shortly after phones went dead.
"We didn't have any problems," Hartley said. "Of course, there was no service available for people who tried to call patient's rooms. But other than that, we were just fine."
Mandy Leatherwood, Memorial Medical Center spokeswoman, also said there were no significant problems caused by the outage.
"Fortunately, we have a really good backup system here and we were able to stay in touch," Leatherwood said. "We never lost in-house communications, and we moved to cell phones and radios to take care of any emergency communications that were needed."
Sun-News Reporter Diana Alba contributed to this story.
Steve Ramirez can be reached at (575) 541-5452.
Share your thoughts
•Want to share your thoughts and feelings about Tuesday's major communications outage? E-mail you comments - and please include you name - to Sun-News Reporter Steve Ramirez at: sramirez@lcsun-news.com. Some of the comments will be included in a follow-up story planned for Thursday's edition of the Sun-News.
Failure to communicate
•Two communication lines for Qwest Communications were cut Tuesday afternoon, abruptly severing telephone, Internet and other communications services throughout southern New Mexico.
•The outage began about 3:30 p.m. and lasted about 3 1/2 hours.
•The outage affected emergency communications to Mesilla Valley Regional Dispatch Authority, and all other 911 services from Socorro south to the Texas state line.
•Some cellular telephone services were also affected.
