RHAME - Donna Graham tried her hardest but she had to watch a man die of a massive heart attack out in the oil field while emergency help tried to find them.

Graham, of Rhame, believes that he might be alive today if she could have used her cell phone to call 911.

Rhame is in a large territory that's virtually a black hole of across-the-air communications. About 130 people streamed into the town hall Tuesday to tell the Public Service Commission things have to change.

The meeting was organized by Rhame Mayor Trace Wiffler, who hoped a few people would show and was surprised by the large number who did.

He probably shouldn't have been. Lunch was free and the day was splendid.

More importantly, Rhame is the headquarters of the biggest fire district in North Dakota, covering about 600 square miles and encompassing one of the largest oil fields in the state.

Cell phones work in maybe 10 percent of that territory.

Oil field safety is one concern and so is getting help to a car wreck or to a ranch accident.

A patchwork of county dispatch and citizen band radios has served, but none of it does any good if the emergency can't be called in.

Wiffler said folks who have cell phones - and most do, judging by a show of hands at the PSC meeting - pay the same as everyone else, but get much less.

Tom Johnson, a member of the Rhame fire department and a first responder, said he fears an accident in which someone dies because no one saw it and the victim couldn't call for help.

"We've just been lucky," he said.

Patti Holly, rural Rhame, told the PSC it's scary to have to crawl on top of a pickup to see if a cell phone will power up if there's a machinery accident or someone gets hurt on horseback.

Bowman County Emergency Manager Dean Pearson said radio coverage is hit-and-miss and State Radio, which provides an overarching emergency communication frequency, doesn't penetrate the Rhame area, primarily because of terrain.

The Rhame meeting makes it about a dozen that the PSC has held in the state when called to places where cell phones don't cover and consumers want help.

The Verizon and Alltel systems cover much - but not all - of North Dakota, based on the PSC's tower location map.

Rhame, population 189, is in Bowman County in far southwestern North Dakota, and on that map it's in a black hole that starts at Interstate 94 on the north and on Highway 85 on the east.

There's not one tower in that entire area, PSC Commissioner Susan Wefald pointed out.

At 3,192 feet above sea level, Rhame has the highest elevation of any incorporated community in the state, but high buttes and hills put it in the shadow of the nearest tower in Bowman.

PSC Commissioner Tony Clark said the agency doesn't have much regulatory authority, but it does have relationships with the cell phone providers.

He said the result of the community meetings and the PSC's followup with cell phone providers has been a new tower going up in all but one location. "We have no authority to order towers to be built," he said.

Wefald called for a small group of volunteers to help identify where a tower should go up in that large area, if one does.

One tower won't cover the entire area currently in the so-called black hole, she said.

Wefald said towers cost between $250,000 and $500,000 and companies have tended to concentrate on population centers and travel corridors.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@;westriv.com.)