Residents Experience Phone, Cable Outages Due to Overhead Wire Mishap

If it isn't the large overgrown oaks in need of regular maintenance by the city, it's the large commercial trucks traversing residential streets, bedeviling residents of the Deepdale and North Hills section of Little Neck of late.

Last week, a large truck cut the overhead phone and cable wire leading to a house belonging to a resident of 57th Avenue in North Hills. Though Verizon, the company responsible for maintaining the hookups, responded the next afternoon, the inconvenience was reportedly felt by every one of the home's inhabitants.

"When you have a large family at home, 24 hours without cable, TV, and telephone seems like a month," the resident wrote on Saturday.

According to Judy Cohen, president of the North Hills Civic Association, last week's outage on 57th Avenue wasn't an isolated incident. 

Despite a ban on commercial vehicles not making local deliveries from using Little Neck Parkway, Cohen reported sightings of trucks both traversing or parked on streets in the neighborhood.

"The noise from the trucks is annoying... and it also increases the risk of potholes on our streets," Cohen said. 

As for overgrown trees in the neighborhood playing havoc with overhead wires, that problem isn't going away — at least anytime soon. 

It will be three or four years before the trees in the area will be up for periodic maintenance by the city, according to Community Board 11 district manager Susan Seinfeld.

Whether overgrown trees or commercial trucks are the cause, Cohen advised any residents experiencing problems with overhead wires to call 311.