LIGHTNING BLAMES FOR CABLE OUTAGE

Lightning was blamed for a three-hour TCI Cablevision outage in Cape Girardeau Thursday evening.

Roger Harms, manager of TCI's Cape Girardeau and Jackson offices, said lightning struck a tree near the Missouri Veteran's Home in the west end of the city at about 4:50 p.m. Thursday.

"It struck the tree and followed the roots down to the line and burned it in half," he said.

All Cape Girardeau TCI customers were without cable television for about three hours while crews attempted to find the break.

Harms said the line apparently had been damaged previously without the cable company's knowledge.

"If it wouldn't have been damaged, there wouldn't have been a problem," he said. "We've got it patched now with a line on top of the ground to restore service, but we're probably going to have to replace the entire line in that area."