Updated: Dec. 20

by Steve Ramirez, Las Cruces Sun-News
Las Cruces, N.M. — Though it could have been dangerous, 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, N.M., about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, and at another construction site near Tijeras, just north 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 spokes man in Arizona. “The two cuts were totally separate, completely independent from each other.”

But telephone and e-mail services were slowly restored soon 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 between — there was no or very limited communications service. Unless you had a cellular telephone, there was no way to talk, surf the Internet, or read and respond to e-mail. 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 Las Cruces Assistant City Manager Robert Garza. “There were numerous calls to Mesilla Valley Regional Dispatch Authority (MVRDA) that couldn’t get through. We had to bring in additional alternate lines, but that took some time. Compounding the problems was that our emergency backup system, at the New Mexico State Police Office (in southwest Las Cruces), also went down.”

Ultimately, four telephone lines — which included two cellular telephone lines — were established to handle emergency calls to the 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.

Many Las Cruces businesses had problems because they weren’t able to use credit- and debit-card machines, which rely on network connections.

Copyright © 2010 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy 

Related Links

• “Outage sparks inquiry,” by Steve Ramirez, Las Cruses Sun News, Dec. 15, 2010