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By BILL VARIAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2000
GOSPEL ISLAND -- Crews for Sprint were working Monday and Tuesday to repair damage to a phone line that has left as many as 900 customers without service since the weekend.
Sprint did not have a firm estimate on the extent of the outage, saying the number of homes and businesses may have been far fewer than 900.
Sprint Florida spokesman Jason Duff said the outage was caused by workers from Time Warner Communications, which was laying service lines along Gospel Island Road. While digging a trench, the workers cut into a Sprint phone line in several areas, possibly with pickaxes, he said.
"It looked like a woodpecker got in there," said Duff, quoting one of the men supervising his company's repair work.
The outage was generally concentrated in the Gospel Island area, he said.
Duff said Sprint responded to reports of non-working phones Monday. He was unable to say when precisely the outage began or when the company expects to complete the repairs.
Sprint crews spent much of Monday attempting to determine the extent of damage to the company's phone line. They were working Tuesday afternoon to replace as much as 100 to 200 yards of phone line along the damaged area.
Duff said the line damaged served up to 900 customers but wasn't completely severed.