The State : Long-Distance Service Cut

Long-distance telephone service for more than 250,000 customers in Santa Barbara County and part of San Luis Obispo County was cut off after a cable was destroyed at a Los Angeles excavation project, officials said. GTE California Co., which provides phone service for the region, said it has 264,000 customers in the affected area. The cable was destroyed by workers drilling a horizontal hole under Ventura Boulevard near Topanga Canyon Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. Between 3,000 and 5,000 calls an hour were blocked from getting into the region, said American Telephone & Telegraph Co. spokeswoman Kelly Williams in Los Angeles. No figures were available on how many calls couldn’t get out. In an unrelated incident, a massive power outage cut electricity to about 108,000 customers in northern Nevada, after a transmission facility failed in Idaho, Sierra Pacific Power Co. said.