If anyone in the Catskills still needs convincing that cell phone service is sorely needed in the region, after this year's torrential flooding and widespread communication outages -- well, here's one more local scrap of evidence.
A couple of hunters who got stuck in a Bethel swamp on Wednesday, November 30 were able to call for help, thanks to a new cell phone tower installed just a few months ago in the area, the Times Herald-Record reports today.
Only a few months before, [Stephen] Milisauskas and [Jeff] Portz might have been stuck in the mud a lot longer, according to B.J. Gettel of the Bethel building department. Six months ago, there was no cell phone reception at all in the swamps, he said.
"The area was definitely called a dead zone," Gettel said.
