The job of repairing the EMS communications tower felled by a wind storm earlier this month is on its way to getting started.

A survey of damaged equipment to prepare an itemized replacement cost for the town's insurance agency, Pool/Pact, is expected to be done by GWRC, LLC today.

The tower's fall temporarily affected a variety of the town's public sectors, including the fire department, the sheriff's office, and the school district.

The communications outage was only temporary, however, and within hours both public service departments were using separate repeaters on opposite sides of town, and the school district's bus dispatching system is running on a back-up system at the bus depot.

A temporary tower is expected to be placed at Channel 41's site within the next couple of months.

The thought that the problem is on its way to being fixed will come as a comfort to residents who don't have cable or satellite and use "bunny ears" to pick up local programming from Las Vegas.

Although there is a repeater on Mt. Potosi, many residents live too far away to pick up the signal and often times do not have the option of using CMA, the local cable provider, because they don't offer service to some areas.

Satellite is not always a fiscally possible option for others, leaving those residents with literally next-to-nothing to watch on TV.