Outage affected multiple counties

GRANT COUNTY — Phone lines went down yesterday afternoon and were up and running by 7:49 p.m.

A phone line was cut at the Grant County International Airport by a construction crew working on the new entry to the site, Sam Lorenz, Director of Grant County Emergency Management said.

Phone calls between Moses Lake and Ephrata could not be made, 9-1-1 was down, fax machines weren't working and some Internet connections failed, he said.

Citizens living in George, Quincy, Ephrata, Soap Lake and parts of the county were affected, he added. The outage extended to Kittitas County, Chelan County, Douglas County and Okanogan County.

The outage was extensive because it was a large bundle of multiple lines cut on accident.

"Our hope is people will realize 9-1-1 is vulnerable," Lorenz said.

There are other avenues for people to report an emergency.

Citizens can resort to the business lines for the fire department and police department or city hall. Immediately after the outage, all emergency agencies were notified calls were coming through business lines, he said.

Construction crews are required to contact Qwest Communications before digging in certain areas to prevent outages.