Phone Line to Santa Barbara Cut

Long-distance telephone service for more than a quarter of a million customers in Santa Barbara County and part of San Luis Obispo County was cut off today after a cave-in at a Los Angeles excavation project damaged a major phone line, officials said.

GTE California Co., the provider of local phone service for that region, said it has 196,000 residential and 68,000 business customers in the affected area. The excavation accident in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles kinked the only major long-distance line into the affected region, said Kelly Williams, spokeswoman for American Telephone & Telegraph Co. AT&T; owns the line but rival long-distance carriers MCI and Sprint lease space on it, she said.