Power, phones out in Ottawa Thursday after powerline falls [telecom]

By Bryan Reynolds

OTTAWA - Four AEP Ohio vehicles and seven employees converged at the intersection of Williamstown Road and Oak Street a bit before 1 p.m. Thursday to fix a downed power line which caused a power outage and CenturyLink phone service outage in the village.

Brad Brubaker, 9-1-1 coordinator for the Putnam County Sheriff's Office, said they noticed the power was out for their business and company phone lines at around 12:20 p.m. The sheriff's office never lost power to the building but the power was down to the CenturyLink phone service, and 9-1-1 dispatch, for a couple of hours, he said. CenturyLink rerouted the sheriff's office 9-1-1 calls to a cellphone in the dispatcher office, Brubaker said.

[Contents of newspaper article that was posted by the Digest's editor omitted...]

One thing I would like to request of the editor, and indeed of any contributors who submit local media reports that refer to events in specific areas which are identified solely by a city, town, county, [or other name], is that you add more geographic context to the subject line if it is not completely clear where that place is. For example, when I saw the subject line "Power, phones out in Ottawa..." I assumed that the incident took place in Ottawa, Ontario, a metropolis that is also Canada's capital. Only by reading the article itself and seeing a reference to the name of the power utility did I eventually discover that the story was referring to Ottawa, Ohio, a village of fewer than

5,000 people. For residents of that particular corner of Ohio reading a local publication, it may be easy to understand that just plain "Ottawa" refers to the seat of Putnam County. For the rest of the world, including probably almost all readers of the Digest, the default "Ottawa" is most likely the one in Ontario. For that reason, a subject line of "Power, phones out in Ottawa (Ohio) Thursday after power line falls" would have been much more helpful.

Thanks,

Bob Goudreau Cary, NC

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