Officials say an accidental fiber cut caused an 911 outage to cell phone callers on AT&T, Verizon and Northern PCS on Monday.
The fiber has since been repaired.
The outage, which affected 14 counties in all, rendered citizens unable to connect to 911 operators using their cell phones for at least an hour. Trying to do so only produced a busy signal.
Land-line phones were still able to connect to 911 during the outage.
Northern PCS customers in the following counties were impacted by this outage:
- Beltrami
- Cass
- Clearwater
- Hubbard
- Itasca
- Lake
- Pennington
- Polk
Verizon customers in the following counties were impacted by this outage:
- Beltrami
- Cass
- Clearwater
- Hubbard
- Itasca
- Koochiching
- Lake
- Lake of the Woods
- Mahnomen
- Marshall
- Norman
- Pennington
- Polk
- Roseau
AT&T customers in Beltrami and Clearwater counties are also impacted by this outage.
Citizens who want a back-up method to contact their local dispatchers can find a complete list of the phone numbers for the affected counties below.
Beltrami County Sheriff's Office: 218-333-9111
Cass County Sheriff's Office: 218-547-1424
Clearwater County Sheriff's Office: 218-694-6226
Hubbard County Sheriff's Office: 218-732-3331
Itasca County Sheriff's Office: 218-327-3477
Koochiching County Sheriff's Office: 218-283-4416
Lake County Sheriff's Office: 218-834-8385
Lake of the Woods County Sheriff's Office: 218-634-1143
Mahnomen County Sheriff's Office: 218-935-2255
Marshall County Sheriff's Office: 218-745-5411
Norman County Sheriff's Office: 218-784-7114
Pennington County Sheriff's Office: 218-681-6161
Polk County Sheriff's Office: 218-281-0431
Roseau County Sheriff's Office: 218-463-1421
