Cox cable repair
could cost $100,000
By TRAVIS
PURSER
Express Staff Writer
Cable
Internet and television service was restored Dec. 23 in much of the Wood
River Valley after a dump truck accidentally cut a cable in Ketchum and
knocked out service for more than two days.
Four
technicians for Cox Communications worked around the clock from the
morning of Friday, Dec. 21, until 1 p.m. the following Sunday to restore
service to customers from East Fork Road south to Bellevue, Susan
Littlefield, Cox’s officer manager said. Some customers in Ketchum and
Elkhorn were also affected.
Cox will
offer credits to the hundreds of residential and commercial customers
whose service was interrupted, Littlefield said. That lost revenue would
be added to the $50,000 to $100,000 Littlefield estimated the accident
would cost by the time permanent repairs to the downed cable are completed
in the spring.
A special
crew will have to travel from Texas to Ketchum in the Spring to
permanently replace the cable with its hundreds of hair-like fibers, which
were individually spliced back together in a temporary repair over the
weekend, Littlefield said.
Cox plans
to bill KD Excavation for the work. The excavation company owns the truck
responsible for the damage, Kim Bryson, the company’s office manager
said.
"I
hope they’ve got good insurance, because I can’t use a back-hoe,"
Littlefield said.
"Yeah,
we have insurance to cover it," Craig Christenson, a project manager
for KD Excavation said.
The problem
began at 6:45 a.m. Dec.21 when one of the company’s dump trucks drove
along Ketchum’s Fifth Street with its bed still up and cut the overhead
cable, Bryson said.