Phones Are Down at Cracks Centraal

Just called Qwest to see what the heck was going on, as our phone lines have been down since Saturday evening. Seems that there's been some vandalism in our neck of the woods, with thieves going after the copper wire. Here's the story from the Seattle P-I:

About 200 Qwest customers in the Delridge neighborhood of West Seattle have been without phone service for more than a day after a thief nabbed copper wire off of a downed utility pole, Qwest spokeswoman Shasha Richardson said Monday.

The theft happened over the weekend - probably on Sunday, Richardson said.

Phone service is expected to be restored to the Delridge customers by 6 p.m. Monday, she added.

The theft is part of a growing trend, where thieves make off with copper wire so they can sell it at scrap yards. But Qwest hasn't experienced a high volume of copper wire theft, Richardson said.

The very helpful Qwest phone rep noted that our service probably won't return till Tuesday or Wednesday.

[PS] And I'm not kidding about the Qwest rep being very helpful -- she even called back to give me an update on what she had learned of the situation. Also, it seems that DNDA (the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association) has also been hit by the phone outage.

[UPDATE] Surprisingly good news (especially when one is dealing with Qwest) -- we have our phone service back. Hopefully, this issue is also fixed for the rest of affected Delridge residents.