"I bonded a guy last Monday, and it took until Thursday to let him out of jail," said Gary Vaughan, a bail bondsman with 1st Action Bail Bonds in Beckley.
"(The courthouse) sends all their releases via fax and the fax machines are down as well."
Vaughan said that man would likely still be in jail had he not reached out to the prosecuting attorney's office.
"I had to finally go to the prosecutor and talk to the prosecutor's office and say, 'Look, you're violating this guy's civil rights by not letting him out of jail,'" Vaughan said.
"The prosecutor, of course, agreed and, I don't know what they did, but they went over and got some sort of an alternate way in place for them to let people out of jail. But people weren't getting out of jail."
Ben Hatfield, Raleigh County's prosecuting attorney, said the issues has been resolved.
"Last week, we were made aware of a situation involving telecommunications lines being down affecting communication between the Raleigh County Circuit Clerk's Office and the Southern Regional Jail," Hatfield told The Register-Herald on Wednesday. "Immediately upon discovering the issue, we worked with the Raleigh County Circuit judges to immediately remedy the problem and individuals should no longer be affected by the down communication lines which still remain down. But substitute measures have been put in place so that the circuit clerk's office could adequately communicate with the Southern Regional Jail."
According to business owners and county officials, phone lines through Frontier went down on either April 1 or April 2, nearly two weeks ago.
Hatfield said when the outage first occurred it seemed to be city-wide but that has since been remedied to the point that only uptown Beckley offices are still without use of their phone or fax lines with Frontier.
The offices and businesses that remain impacted include the Raleigh County Judicial Annex, which houses the Raleigh County circuit and magistrate courts, and the Raleigh County courthouse, where the Raleigh County clerk's and assessor's offices are located.
Three of the four phone lines for the Raleigh County Day Report Center are down and it's been two weeks since they have been able to receive a fax which would refer clients to their care, said Jimmy Miller, director of Raleigh County Community Corrections.
Phone lines for the Jan-Care Ambulance office in Beckley also went down on the evening of April 1, though they were able to get immediate assistance from Frontier to transfer some of their lines to cell phones, according to Paul Seamann, the director of operations for Jan-Care.
Also among those affected are law offices in downtown Beckley, which are unable to receive calls from clients, and restaurants in the area, which are unreachable by anyone attempting to call in to-go orders.
Instead, anyone calling in to one of these lines is met with the beeping of a busy signal.
Beckley Common councilman and attorney Robert Dunlap said the phone line for his office on Main Street has been down since last week. He added that any time he attempts to contact Frontier, he's either on hold for an extended period of time, transferred from one agent to another or ends up speaking with someone who is unable to provide any useful information.
As a defense attorney, Dunlap said it's vital that his current clients and anyone looking to be a client is able to reach his office.
"I have folks that are from out of the area that we do habeas corpus work for ... and they call our office and they're unable to reach us from prison," he said. "They're unable to reach us from the jail system and they're losing their minds because deadlines are coming up."
He added that with all of the reports coming out of Southern Regional Jail about inmates being killed or mistreated, it's important that opportunities to get out of the jail aren't hindered.
"I'm not being hyperbolic when I say it is a matter of life and death that you get out of that place quickly," Dunlap said.
According to a technician who was working Wednesday to fix Frontier phone lines underneath the intersection of McCreery Street and South Fayette Street in downtown Beckley, phone service was expected to be restored to the judicial annex by the end of Wednesday.
However, when The Register-Herald called the main number for the magistrate and circuit clerk's office just before 5 p.m. Wednesday, the phone lines were still down.
The Register-Herald also reached out to Frontier for comment on the issue as well as when it might be fixed but did not hear back as of press time Wednesday evening.
Raleigh County Administrator Jay Quesenberry said he was told by a Frontier technician that recent storms are the cause of the outages.
"What I'm told by the technician is that three of these dryers went out on the lines which keep the airflow underground so water doesn't get into these cable pairs," Quesenberry said.
"Three dryers went out when they had a surge over at the central office and the cables got wet. And the cables, I think, have paper insulation ... and so they got wet and these lines are just out. They're trying to get it fixed as soon as possible."
Luke Stevens, an environmental specialist with the Beckley Sanitary Board, said they provided equipment to Frontier to assist in removing the water and other stormwater runoff that got in to where the lines are located underground.
Quesenberry said he hasn't been given a concrete timeline from Frontier on when the lines will be repaired.
"We're into our second week and it's just been terrible," he said. "We have no phones at the judicial annex and over at the main courthouse, some of the phones are working — not all of them, some are out. And we have other areas too, that are out too so it's just been really tough."
Newly elected Raleigh County Circuit Clerk Robert McComas said his office has done everything it can to perform its normal duties, but it has not been an easy process.
He said inmate releases, which are normally faxed to jails for security reasons, are now having to be scanned in and emailed, which is a time-consuming process.
"So it takes us more time to do our job now because of the inconvenience and no communications, no phones, so we can't use the fax," McComas said.
Other than putting the word out on social media, McComas said they also have no way of letting people know why they can't call their office unless they come in person, email someone in the courthouse or have a cell phone number for a courthouse employee.
"A lot of people are having to come in person, which is creating a hardship on some of the older people and crippled people," he said. "But I mean, there's virtually nothing we can do and it just doesn't seem like anybody cares. And it would seem to me that Frontier certainly doesn't care. We've not been a high priority for them."
McComas said he credits the work of Donna Perec, the deputy clerk for the Raleigh Circuit clerk's office, who contacted Southern Regional Jail to set up an email system between their offices since faxing was not an option.
When asked about the inmate who had to stay in jail extra days even after being bonded out due to the fax lines being down, McComas said he could not confirm if that was true and if it was, then it was. He said it was not the fault of his office.
"It wasn't our fault if somebody did stay three (extra) days because (Perec), on Monday when our phones first went out, reached out to the (Southern) Regional Jail and said we need an email address," he said. "So we was on top of that; we don't want nobody staying in jail any longer than they have to out there at the regional."
Perec said the circuit clerk's office has only had one bond to email to the jail since the phone lines went down last week.
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