Phone service tile
Only a few pockets of people were still waiting for phone service to be restored around noon in Sequatchie County, Tenn., where an equipment failure early this morning knocked out landline phone service to some 4,800 customers as well as to many cell phones and the county's 911 service.
The problem was reported at 3 a.m. and by 8 a.m. the 911 system and the bulk of phone service had been restored, said Greg Anderson, general manager of the Bledsoe Telephone Cooperative in Pikeville, which serves Bledsoe, Sequatchie and Van Buren counties.
Most of the phone cooperative's equipment failures go unnoticed by the public, he said, because backup systems kick in.
"We have two of everything," he said.
But the piece of equipment that failed can't be configured that way, Anderson said.
"This is one of those weak links," he said.
Apparently, the outage of phone lines and 911 service didn't affect anyone in distress.
"Not to our knowledge," said Mike Twitty, director of the Sequatchie County Emergency Communications District. "We have received no information thus far of any people trying to get to us."
Read more in tomorrow's Times Free Press.