WATFORD CITY, N.D. -- For about 75 minutes Friday, McKenzie County was without cellphone service, leaving many residents without Internet, TV or landline phone access.
McKenzie County Emergency Manager Karolin Rockvoy said she received reports that a line was cut near the Four Bears Casino in New Town, which led to the outages beginning at 2:45 p.m.
Landline phone, TV and Internet access returned shortly after that, but cellphones were down until about 4 p.m., she said. The county asked the National Weather Service to play a civil service message about cellphone access being down on TV after it came back on the air.
Rockvoy said it gave emergency personnel in the state's largest county -- and the center of the Bakken oilfield -- quite a scare.
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"We're the epicenter of the whole oilfield," she said. "It's going 24/7. If anything would have happened ..."
She said there were no reports of major emergencies during the outage.
"Maybe it's just a practice run to get us where we need a be," Rockvoy said.
