By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
The Tucker County Commissioners have been at the forefront of efforts to restore landline phone service to Leadmine following a pair of snowstorms in the area. For over two weeks, the residents of Leadmine have been without phone service. Tucker County Commissioner Fred Davis said he had been in contact with Frontier over the outage since last week. Tucker County Commission President Mike Rosenau has also been in contact with the company and other agencies to coordinate efforts. The site of the outage was located in the woods in an area that is not easily accessible. Due to the nature of the outage, coordination between utilities and agencies was required.
Davis said much of the delay has been in relation to MonPower and the need to shut power down in the area for necessary repairs. “I was calling them and calling them,” Davis said. “And the guy told me it was the power company was what the hold up was because of the pole.”
The delay with Frontier currently involves the need for additional crews and equipment to repair more extensive damage then the company had initially expected. “Now we are waiting on Frontier, but it is worse damage,” Davis said. “But until they could get the power off, they didn’t know.”
According to Davis, as of the afternoon of Friday, January 26th, despite several crews working in the area, due to the more severe damage than anticipated, phone service is likely to not be restored until Monday. “Its not good,” Davis said. “There is more damage then they thought. It will be Monday before they can get their phones back on.”
Davis said additional crews and equipment were being dispatched to assist with the repairs. “They got more equipment coming and more people coming,” Davis said. “There’s like six or seven trucks down there working on it.”
Davis said he was headed to Leadmine to address the residents regarding the latest developments. Telephone service to the area is expected to be restored on Monday, January 29th, according to Davis.