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Telephone outage hits downtown businesses

By Amy Train - | Jul 5, 2000

Without telephone service for much of Monday, several downtown businesses and homes were left hanging. It was definitely not business as usual.

Apparently the phone line that travels in the alley between Fourth and Fifth streets was struck by lightning during a storm Sunday night.

Businesses and homes in the 500 and 600 blocks of East Fourth and Fifth streets were affected by the outage.

Sande Thompson, an employee at Holst Pharmacy, said that it was almost impossible to fill prescriptions.

Without phone service, doctors could not be called, doctors could not call in prescriptions and insurance payments for drugs could not be made.

The U.S. Post Office didn’t have any complications except for the fact that their customers couldn’t call.

Farm Bureau Insurance’s phone also was out but the business was closed for the day. Had it been open, it would have been a different story.

At the dentist office of H. Grant Ritchey Jr., Monday normally is the practice’s busiest day. But things were awfully quiet. Those who tried to get through but couldn’t just walked to the office, Ritchey said.

At Tonganoxie Family Practice, Dr. Deborah Gammill had a similar situation. People who could not get through would just come up to the office. The most complicating factor was not being able to call prescriptions into the pharmacy.

Southwestern Bell workers repaired the outage about 3 p.m. Monday.