Construction crews on Broadway Avenue in Cortez mistakenly cut a Verizon fiber line, leading to phone service blackouts from Friday afternoon until about 7:15 p.m. Friday.
About 4 p.m. Friday, the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office posted an alert saying that 911 service was down in Montezuma and Dolores counties as a result of the fiber line damage.
By 5 p.m., local emergency 911 calls were being routed through Montrose and back to local city and county law enforcement officers, though Verizon service and landlines were still down.
Residents could make 911 calls with AT&T cellular service, though residents with Straight Talk, AT&T and CenturyLink service also reported intermittent cell phone and internet outages.
The Cortez Police Department advised local residents who were receiving phone service to call 970-749-8474 or the Colorado State Patrol at 970-249-4392 if they had an emergency.
The outages also affected police dispatchers in Durango.
“We’re down, the 911 lines are down in Cortez, Archuleta County, Ignacio, Telluride, Gunnison,” said a dispatcher from central dispatch in Durango. “All 911 calls are ringing through to the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office, and they’re notifying us by radio.”
The administrative phone service was spotty, the dispatcher said, adding that she didn’t know when service might be restored. An email from CenturyLink only said there was no estimated time for the fiber line to be repaired.
Cortez police attributed the outages to construction work on U.S. Highway 491 near Lebanon Road, saying that a contractor located the fiber line, but crews misjudged the depth of the line and cut it.
Phones also were down at Southwest Memorial Hospital at 5 p.m. Friday, but the hospital was accepting patients, marketing director Haley Leonard said.
Verizon initially told The Journal that the outages were due to a problem with a cell tower.