Only $1,000 fine possible for outage

CenturyLink reported a contractor struck a fiber optic line that caused the widespread Internet and cell phone outages across Pahrump Valley Tuesday.

CenturyLink issued only a statement that due to a fiber cut CenturyLink customers in northwest Las Vegas and Mount Charleston experienced disruptions to their phone, Internet, Prism TV and 911 services. Company representative Lindsay Williams said that was linked to the disruption in Pahrump, which wasn’t mentioned in their prepared statement. Services were restored at 9:40 p.m. Tuesday, the company said, though many Pahrump customers had service again late Tuesday afternoon.

Nevada Public Utilities Commission spokesman Peter Kostes said under state notification rules, utilities are required to inform the PUC of an outage within four hours. The fiber optic line was struck near the Beltway and Oso Blanca Road in northwest Las Vegas, he said.

“In this case CenturyLink filed an initial report with PUCN notifying us of the outage and that a fiber optic line was cut. The utility is then required to file a final detailed incident report within 30 days. That report is filed in a standing reportable incident and outage docket,” Kostes said. “PUCN staff will review the final report to determine if any action is warranted, including warnings or possible fines.”

The Call Before You Dig program operated by the PUC, in which contractors are asked to call 811 before they dig, was also notified, Kostes said. The responsible party could receive either a verbal warning, a written warning or a fine. If PUC staff recommends a written warning or fine those recommendations are filed in a separate docket. The maximum one-time civil penalty is only $1,000 per violation per day, he said.

Banks were closed except for maybe one drive-through service and many merchants couldn’t accept credit or debit cards.

Arvind Menon, president of Meadows Bank, said he closed the bank because of the safety concerns.

“Two issues here, one is obviously the inconvenience of customers because a lot of customers, especially businesses, like to make deposits and cash checks. They were inconvenienced because we didn’t have any sort of computer interconnectivity whatsoever,” Menon said.

“It kind of exposes us to all kinds of issues, be it any someone trying to rob the bank where we have no capability of notifying law enforcement. So for that reason and that reason only, we closed the branch down,” he said.

While residents with a land line could still call 911, Menon said their phone system is a voice override IP where the phone lines are routed through the main office in Las Vegas. People with land line phones couldn’t call long distance Tuesday. In addition, he said the bank security system and video cameras weren’t working.

“The bank itself does not lose any income per se, typically we have a few customers that come in to open new accounts and those things, maybe they were inconvenienced. Maybe they could not do it, so we lost that business for that day. But by and large it is existing customers inconvenienced and the safety of the employees itself,” Menon said.

If the outage had lasted into Wednesday, Menon said they would have probably opened only the drive-through windows, to protect the employees’ safety. Nevada State Bank kept a drive-through window open for deposits and small withdrawals during the outage.

“What surprises me is they don’t have a backup for that, where CenturyLink cut out fiber optic lines would cut out service to 30,000 to 35,000 people in Pahrump,” he said.

George Romero, owner of Romero’s Restaurant, posted a sign that they weren’t able to take credit cards or debit cards, which turned away some customers. If customers didn’t have cash they had to pay with checks or give an IOU, he said.

“Everybody that runs on the POS system, all our credit card transactions are done through the Internet and without Internet we can’t get any credit cards done. Then the other problem too I have an ATM in the bar that runs off a dial-up system. We had local calling sporadically but we couldn’t dial out long distance so even the ATMs, the ones that were on dial-up, some of them were having problems unable to get out,” Romero said.

The outage also affected his check-cashing business Money Wise or people wanting to wire money, he said.

“So yeah, it wasn’t the best of days,” Romero said.

Diane Chumley, owner of Mom’s Diner, said they couldn’t accept credit or debit cards either. But at her other business, the Sugar Shack, they were able to figure out how to accept them over a cell phone using Digis Communications, the cell phone provider that was up and running.

“Mom’s Diner we could not take them at all and we had a lot of regulars, the regulars, they just had to come back the next day and pay their check,” Chumley said.

There were only a few customers who had to return the next day, who were honest and paid their bill, she said.

“We just informed everybody we couldn’t take credit cards that day. Most people had cash with them, but some people they just carry credit cards or debit cards,” Chumley said.

Assistant Sheriff Rick Marshall said it was a good test of their emergency system.

“We had no dropped calls, we didn’t lose any connectivity with Metro or Vegas. We were able to take our radios and interchange them, we were able to maintain constant contact with the Vegas agencies through Highway Patrol, Metro, ourselves,” Marshall said.

“There’s a service called T-Mobile. They were up and running. We had an inordinate amount of calls to check on elderly people. So we went out and did that. For the most part everything worked great,” he said. “The main call we got was people calling 911 asking why their Internet or cell phone service was not working.”

Pahrump Valley Fire and Rescue Service answered a fire call Tuesday afternoon during the outage. Pahrump Fire Chief Scott Lewis said the fire call came from Nevada Highway Patrol troopers who personally stopped by the fire station to inform the PVFRS about that and two medical calls as well.

“There were several times people tried to call 911 but couldn’t get through. We don’t know if it was system overload or cell service,” Lewis said. “NHP was receiving some 911 calls and relaying them to our troopers directly. The troopers would come into our station and report situations.”

Lewis said he didn’t know of any situations where there was a life-threatening emergency and the victims couldn’t contact emergency fire or ambulance service.

“Nobody’s informed us one way or the other who is the responsible party and where,” Lewis said. “I think when some people were trying to get through there was so much overload because people were using it for informational purposes. That’s why we got the information out to the media 911 is for emergency purposes only.”