8,000 phones still out in Midtown, Dunwoody 'Pill Hill' medical offices, Colony Square among business centers hit hard by outage. S.A. Reid - Staff Friday, October 6, 2000

A phone service outage in Atlanta's Midtown and Dunwoody's "Pill Hill" areas is causing hang-ups for 8,000 homes and business.

Medical offices and commercial businesses contacted report losses of all or most of their phone lines. Fax use has come to a standstill at some locations.

Pharmacists at Concord Drugs at the Northside Professional Building in Sandy Springs have resorted to handling prescriptions orders manually.

"We really rely on the phone for everything," said owner Dennis Long, who had BellSouth connect calls to his cell phone. "Everything has slowed down."

BellSouth is working frantically to restore service knocked out Wednesday when contractors installing cables for two competing telecommunications firms cut phone lines at Peachtree and 14th streets as well as at Johnson Ferry and Peachtree Dunwoody roads.

Police warned that drivers should expect lane closings at both locations.

Fulton County police particularly asked motorists to avoid the intersection at Peachtree Dunwoody and Johnson Ferry roads while repairs are under way.

About 3,000 customers in Midtown and 5,000 in the Dunwoody area were initially affected by the problem that could take BellSouth crews through the weekend to fix.

The outage has forced residents to rely on cell phones.

This the second time in the past few months that phone service in this stretch of Midtown has been interrupted for this reason, said BellSouth spokesman Joe Chandler.

Property managers like TrizecHahn have had to issue letters and post memos alerting tenants at the hard-hit Colony Square to the problem.

"A lot of small business that do tons of business have shut down," said Heather Greene, a TrizecHahn assistant property manager. "I hope it's ready by Tuesday."

http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/today/local_news_93ddf620c03d322100ff.html

-- Doris (reaper@pacifier.com), October 06, 2000