Airwave glitch hits Springs area / Garage-door openers jammed, hundreds say

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E1685722,00.html

Next time NATO officials say they're doing a lockdown, the folks in the luxury Broadmoor neighborhood will take them seriously.  Very seriously. Last week, NATO workers erected security and communications towers in the area in advance of this week's defense ministers' conference. By 9 a.m. Friday morning, all 10 lines at Overhead Door Company of Colorado Springs were lit up with calls from the Broadmoor and the nearby town of Security complaining that their garage- door openers had jammed. More than 400 calls from frantic, frustrated and flustered residents came on that day alone. They haven't stopped since, said the company's receptionist, Tina Oetken. Coincidence? Oetken and her bosses don't think so. "With over 600-plus calls, it's hard to believe that it can be anything but" NATO, Oetken said Wednesday. Garage-door transmitters work on radio frequencies. NATO also needs radio frequencies but insists it isn't poaching off the frequencies that signal remote-controlled garage-door openers. "We've double-checked our system, and there's no technical reason that we should be causing the problem," said Army Lt. Col. Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman. Keck apologized if anyone was inconvenienced but said the additional security is for everyone in the Broadmoor and not just those attending the meeting. Oetken said some of her customers were even locked out of their houses because their computer keypads jammed. Other residents, like Debbie DeYoung, have suffered only intermittent problems. "Oh, I thought maybe it was the battery," DeYoung said when she learned that many of her neighbors were struggling with their garage-door openers. "My garage door has been wild." DeYoung isn't alone. A nearby Radio Shack sold out of 12-volt batteries, which are often used for garage-door openers, Friday morning. A new shipment sold out in 90 minutes. "It was one customer after another asking if we had batteries for garage-door openers," Radio Shack sales associate Janell Fowler said. Store workers quickly figured out there couldn't possibly be that many dead batteries at once, so they began running tests. With very few exceptions, the batteries were good. People were still coming in for batteries Wednesday, Fowler said. But now she is ready. "Now when people come and say, 'I need a battery for my garage-door opener' I say, 'No, you don't.' It has been pretty crazy around here." Crazy is exactly how Cameron Hayton describes the month of September, but now he's cashing in. Hayton, the owner of the 3-month-old luxury taxi service Town Cars of Colorado, got a call last month asking him to track down 30 identical Cadillacs for the visiting NATO ministers and deliver them to the Broadmoor within 30 days. Officials told him they wanted the identical cars to avoid any squabbling, Hayton said. Government officials told him at least one diplomat left a previous conference when he didn't get the color car he wanted, he added. Hayton tried numerous car dealers and rental car agencies and, like the government, had no luck finding identical cars. Finally, Hayton called Red Noland Cadillac, which called General Motors. Thirty $46,000 Cadillac DeVilles were made in Michigan specifically to cart the NATO dignitaries around. After the conference winds up today, the bronze- colored cars with chrome wheels will be offered for sale across the Front Range.