Fallen tree — not woodpecker — to blame for Monday’s technology glitch

MONTROSE  — Qwest found the cause to Monday’s more than six-hour lapse in cell phone, long distance and Internet service — a fallen tree.

Rumors milled after the outage, prompting some to believe that a woodpecker had pecked through a fiber optic line. But Carolyn Tyler, Qwest’s Colorado spokeswoman, confirmed Wednesday that a fallen tree in a remote area was indeed the culprit.

The outage hindered many daily routines of Western Slope residents.

“You don’t realize how many tasks deal with the Internet,” Ben Keefer, director of Mesa State’s Montrose campus, said Monday.

Mesa State College and Montrose County offices experienced trouble with e-mail services and had to rely on fax machines.

Area residents also experienced failed calls, gaps in service or no service at all.

Bob Kelley, Verizon’s media manager, said the interruption effected 32 of its cell sites in Colorado.

Vanessa Smith, AT&T’s Rocky Mountain Regional spokeswomen, said they too had several sites down.

Qwest wholesales service to other carriers throughout Colorado, which impacted many of the area’s providers.