Northern Arizona man dies after bystanders could not call 911 due to service outage

Emergency responders head out into the field in St. Johns.

A 74-year-old man in rural St. Johns, just west of the New Mexico border, died Sunday on the way to a hospital after two bystanders were unable to call 911 — or anyone else — for some time due to a service outage before they finally flagged down an ambulance, authorities said. 

The death occurred during a period when internet and phone service was disrupted across the entirety of Apache County and most of neighboring Navajo County, according to St. Johns Police Chief Lance Spivey. 

Dealing with these types of outages is nothing new for these communities, he said, but this is the first time officials can directly connect a death to these service disruptions. 

In addition, after a young girl accidentally impaled herself on a curtain rod, her mother was unable to contact anyone for help, authorities said. 

The outage began Saturday as the result of criminal activity to equipment belonging to Frontier Communications, Spivey said, and service was not restored until around 3 p.m. Monday, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without any service for 48 hours.

"Public safety professionals in this region — we deserve better, the public deserves better," Spivey said. "We take our profession very seriously and when we can't do our job protecting basic human life or provide medical treatment appropriately, it's shameful."

An employee working at St. Johns emergency dispatch call center.

The Arizona Corporation Commission which regulates public utilities in the state previously investigated Frontier Communications for outages impacting emergency services as early as April 2020, in which the company was found to have 66 hours of 911 service interruptions between then and April the following year. 

Further, the commission found that "Frontier demonstrated that while it was prepared to respond to outages, it appeared not to be doing enough to prevent the outages," its March 2022 decision reads. 

Despite presenting the commission with a plan to address the issues this past spring, it is not enough, Spivey said. 

After lastweekend's outages, Spivey sent a public letter to the commission condemning Frontier's outlined remedies as "quite simply insufficient and inadequate and blatantly jeopardizing public safety" and calling for an Order to Show Cause proceeding where the company will have to explain themselves. 

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The Corporation Commission acknowledged it was aware of the weekend outages but declined to specifically comment on the case citing their ongoing investigation. 

As communities statewide transition to a new call-handling system with the explicit goal of avoiding outages in the future, Frontier will soon no longer be directly responsible for the phone and internet service at nine call centers serving more than 333,000 Arizonans.

But Frontier isn't off the hook entirely either, Spivey said, because they still will have some role in the area's cellular infrastructure which is why, he argues, they need to be held accountable. 

"My hope is that Frontier leaves the area, goes out of business," Spivey said. "They have jeopardized public safety. If this was to happen in the Valley, it'd be different because there's so many more people that live down there there'd be outrage and all kinds of stuff.

The St. Johns police department.

"But we're small and rural so we get stuck with a company that really doesn't care. They put dollars above names, above people."

The Corporation Commission's preliminary agenda for its June 28 meeting includes an item regarding the investigation of the Frontier Companies in Arizona regarding 911 outages and the adequacy of its equipment and facilities. 

On Wednesday, St. Johns business owner Mandi Huth submitted an official complaint to the commission, outlining the impact of the outages on residents and businesses in addition to emergency services. 

"As small business owners who rely on the internet it is detrimental to our income when services go down. That we can deal with … What we will not deal with is having 911 services in our community go down and our cell phones go down, our resource to call 911," Huth wrote in her complaint to the commissioners. "This is unacceptable. I am asking each of you to consider what it would mean to you and to your family if you needed emergency services and were unable to reach them due to a utility company who puts profits over people."

Frontier Communications could not be reached for comment but sent out a statement to some news media outlets.

“Frontier is offering up to $10K for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual(s) who vandalized Frontier-owned communication lines in Navajo County, Arizona that led to an outage in the community last weekend," according to the statement published by AZ Family on Wednesday morning.

"We have long been committed to providing this critical infrastructure to St. John[sic]. We have offered to discuss the network redundancy with the Arizona Corporation Commission, the Arizona Department of Administration, and the industry in order to work toward a solution that ensures reliability when the technology has been damaged due to causes such as weather or vandalism, as in this instance.”

Contact northern Arizona reporter Lacey Latch at llatch@gannett.com or on social media @laceylatch. Coverage of northern Arizona on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is funded by the nonprofit Report for America and a grant from the the Vitalyst Health Foundation in association with The Arizona Republic.