Andrews Residents Angry Over Continued Phone Loss - KWES NewsWest 9 / Midland, Odessa, Big Spring, TX: newswest9.com |

Nick Lawton
NewsWest 9

ANDREWS - Andrews residents told NewsWest 9 they're frustrated, but they just don't know what they can do about it.

"Dropped calls, failed calls, all the time," Andrews resident, Cruz Chavez, said.

"We pretty much had no contact with the outside world," Andrews Resident, Carl Smith, said.

"You get used to it now," Andrews resident, Rebecca Hooper, said. "You pick it up and you're like 'My phone's not working! What am I going to do now?'"

For most of Monday, telephone signals that run through the wires were running anywhere but in Andrews.

Many residents told NewsWest 9 they lost phone service no matter the carrier, as well as the Internet.

It's not the first time either.

Chavez said she's tired of it happening.

The last time phones went down, this past August, she said she nearly lost her grandson.

"He was on the bus," she said. "He forgot to get off at the school where I work and he ended up out in the country, and I couldn't call anyone because my phone wasn't working."

Smith and his crew have been working on the Centurion Pipeline project in Andrews for more than a month now.

He said losing his phone meant losing work.

"We deal with our cell phones to all of our contacts, to suppliers, to back at the office, to each other, and all that, so if we don't have our phone, we have no communication," he said.

Other residents told NewsWest 9 off-camera that some local stores became unable to take credit and debit cards thanks to the outage, just cash only.

More people reported that signs were put up in the post office asking for patience with the slower service the outage caused.

For Hooper, the lost phones even impacted a family funeral.

"We had people coming in from San Angelo, Arizona, Dallas, and nobody could get a hold of nobody to make sure that everybody's OK," she said. "Are you going to be here on time,? Are you going to make it? Are you not going to make it?"

NewsWest 9 called AT&T customer service to find out what happened, but all they told us was that it was an unexplained signal outage.

Other reports came into us about a fiber optic cable at some point between Midland and Andrews being cut.

Residents told NewsWest 9, phones and Internet were restored around 3 p.m. Monday afternoon.