A 74-year-old man from rural St. Johns, just west of the New Mexico border, died Sunday en route to a hospital. Before they finally flagged down an ambulance, officials said.
The deaths occurred at a time when internet and phone service were disrupted throughout Apache County and much of neighboring Navajo County, according to St. John’s Police Chief Lance Spivey.
Dealing with these kinds of outages is nothing new for these communities, but this is the first time officials have been able to directly link deaths to these service disruptions, he said.
Furthermore, after a young girl was accidentally impaled on a curtain rod, her mother had no one to call for help.
Spivey said the outage began Saturday as a result of criminal activity against Frontier Communications equipment and service was not restored until around 3 p.m. Monday, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without service for 48 hours.
“Public safety professionals in the region deserve better than we do, and the public deserve better,” Spivey said. “We take our profession very seriously and it’s a shame when we can’t protect basic human life or provide adequate medical care.”
The Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates Arizona’s utilities, previously investigated Frontier Communications for an outage affecting emergency services in April 2020. The investigation found that the company had a 66-hour interruption in 911 service between then and the following April.
Furthermore, in its March 2022 decision, the Commission “indicated that, while Frontier was prepared to respond to the outage, it did not appear to have taken sufficient steps to prevent it.” I found
Despite presenting the committee with a plan to address the issue this spring, Spivey said it wasn’t enough.
after the last After the weekend’s outages, Spivey has accused Frontier’s outlined relief measures of being “totally inadequate, inadequate, and blatantly endangering public safety,” and the company must explain itself. I have sent an open letter to the Commission requesting proceedings for a justified order in the case.
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The Works Commission confirmed it was aware of the weekend’s outage, but declined to comment specifically on the matter, citing an ongoing investigation.
As communities across the state migrate to new call processing systems with the express goal of avoiding future outages, Frontier provides phone and Internet services in nine call centers serving more than 333,000 Arizonans. You will no longer be directly responsible.
But Frontier isn’t completely off the hook either, Spivey said. That’s because they still play some role in the region’s cell phone infrastructure, and that’s why they need to be held accountable, he argues.
“I hope Frontier leaves the area and goes out of business,” Spivey said. “They put public safety at risk. If this happened in Silicon Valley, it would be a different situation because there are more people living there and more anger and all sorts of things.
“But we’re small and rural, so we’re stuck with companies that really don’t care. They care more about dollars than names and people.”
The preliminary agenda for the June 28 meeting of the Companies Commission includes items related to the 911 shutdown of Arizona’s frontier corporations and an investigation into the adequacy of their equipment and facilities.
On Wednesday, St. John’s business owner Mandy Huth filed a formal complaint with the commission outlining the impact of the blackout on residents and businesses in addition to emergency services.
“As a small business owner who depends on the internet, when service goes down, it hurts my income. “This is unacceptable. We need emergency services and urgent for utility companies that put profits before people,” Huth wrote in his complaint to the commissioner. Think about what it would mean to you and your family if you were unable to contact the service.”
Frontier Communications could not be reached for comment, but sent statements to some news outlets.
“Frontier is offering up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of individuals who disrupted Frontier-owned communications lines and crippled communities in Navajo County, Arizona last weekend. ‘ said the statement. Issued by AZ Family on Wednesday morning.
“We have been working for a long time to provide Saint John with this critical infrastructure.[sic]We encourage you to discuss network redundancy with the Arizona State Corporation Commission, the Arizona Department of Management, and industry to work toward solutions that ensure reliability when your technology is damaged by weather, vandalism, or other causes. I suggested. this instance. “
Contact reporter Lacey Latch in Northern Arizona. llatch@gannett.com or on social media @laceylatchNorthern Arizona coverage on azcentral.com and the Republic of Arizona is funded by a grant from the non-profit Report for America and the Vitalyst Health Foundation Associated with the Republic of Arizona.
