A brush fire in Glenwood Springs damaged fiber lines and disrupted internet services for some Roaring Fork Valley residents Monday night, a spokesperson for Comcast said.
The brush fire off Donegan Road in West Glenwood — adjacent to the Fireside Mobile Home Park — was contained at 3:53 p.m., according to a city of Glenwood Springs news release sent Monday. The city’s electric department, Xfinity and CenturyLink all responded to the fire, Glenwood Springs Fire Department Emergency Coordinator Mina Bolton said. The city de-energized the lines near the fire and the plastic cover over the lines was damaged.
The fire was started by an undetermined human cause, Bolton added.
Spokespeople for Comcast and Verizon told the Aspen Daily News disruptions to fiber lines caused the widespread outages. A representative for CenturyLink could not be reached by time of publication.
“(Monday), our customers in the Roaring Fork Valley experienced an outage related to a brush fire that damaged our fiber lines,” Leslie Oliver, senior director of external communications for Comcast, said in an email. Comcast is the parent company of Xfinity, which serves more than 33,500 residential and business customers in the Roaring Fork Valley.
“We know any time without service is frustrating, and we apologize for the inconvenience to our customers. Our crews worked throughout the night to repair the damaged fiber until service was restored around 2:30 a.m.,” Oliver continued.
The internet and cellular service outage disrupted communications throughout the valley Monday. It forced restaurants and other businesses to close or resort to an all-cash-transaction system. City Market in Aspen was only accepting cash and Mod’s Thai House in Basalt was taking Venmo payments.
A spokesperson for Verizon also confirmed disruptions to a fiber cable caused outages for its customers.
“A third party vendor experienced a fiber cut yesterday, which has caused a disruption in service for some customers in the Roaring Fork Valley,” Liz Gelardi, senior communications manager for Verizon, said in an email. “Our engineers quickly engaged the vendor and service was restored around 2 a.m. this morning.”
It was not immediately clear who the vendor was. Gelardi did not respond to a question about how many customers were impacted by the outage.
A Pitkin Alert issued at 6:22 p.m. Monday said cell service and internet were intermittent and “some calls may go through, while others may not connect.” The alert encouraged anyone with an emergency who was unable to reach 911 to drive to the nearest fire station or police department for assistance.
Another Pitkin Alert issued at 9 a.m. Tuesday said the connectivity issues in Pitkin County were resolved and emergency services were fully operational.
