Excerpt
RICK KARR (NewsHour): Angela Day’s landline kept going dead in 2012. She didn’t have a cell phone she could use instead because cell coverage is spotty in the Appalachian region of Ohio where she lives. And at the house where she was living with her daughter and her parents, there’s no cell signal at all. So whenever she had to be away from home, she worried. Especially about her father.
ANGELA DAY: He had a heart condition and he had had several open-heart surgeries. He had triple-bypass surgery.
RICK KARR: A few days after Christmas, he said he wasn’t feeling well.
ANGELA DAY: He called over to talk to a nurse. And he was having problems with the phone.
RICK KARR: His condition deteriorated, and finally he said he needed an ambulance. The family called 911, but the line was so bad that they finally gave up and Day’s brother rushed their father to doctors. But it was too late. He died that evening.
ANGELA DAY: It was really frustrating close to the whole week afterwards we couldn’t even call out to plan the funeral. We couldn’t even call and tell family that he had passed. I had to go to my workplace to use the phone to even call the funeral home.
RICK KARR: Angela Day’s phone didn’t work because thieves were stealing telephone wires all over the county. It’s one of the poorest in Ohio, and the copper in the lines was valuable.
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