Copper wire thieves have left people who live in Hacienda Heights without landline phone service and internet access for months, and they are demanding answers from the service provider and police Wednesday.
During a Hacienda Heights Improvement Association meeting with the community Monday night to address the issue, residents complained about being without service since April and want to know how they are supposed to contact family and loved ones in the event of an emergency.
The community is also in an area that has poor cell phone service. There is a concern that if there is a fire, earthquake or flood, there is no way to contact emergency responders or family members.
Thieves steal copper wire that is used by Frontier Communications for internet cables and phone lines. A representative from Frontier Communications attended the meeting and told the residents the cable theft is tough to stop.
The residents complained about the lack of responses from Frontier Communications and the continued outages.
Douglas McAllister, Frontier's vice president of external affairs in California, promised to deal with billing issues, but said preventing the copper wire thefts is like playing Whack-a-Mole.
"We'll get them dealt with here, and they pop up over there," he said at the meeting.
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Ali Weiner with the Hacienda Heights Improvement Association said the meeting with left McAllister with a very red face.
"He actually thought this was a 5 week outage, was shocked, astonished when we said that it was 7 months," Weiner told KNX News' Pete Demetriou. "He's quite embarrassed."
McAllister promised to deal with billing issues and pledged to rewire the area. He also discussed the possibility of stopping the thefts by replacing the copper cables with fiber optics, which are made of glass, but he said Frontier isn't able to make that replacement because of city safety rules.
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