Emergency call service was disrupted across Louisiana and Mississippi for more than two hours on Thursday afternoon, officials said, citing damage to fiber optic lines operated by AT&T.
Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi said that the state’s Emergency Management Agency had received reports that AT&T was responding to “a series of fiber cuts,” which he said had interrupted service in Mississippi and Louisiana.
Scott Simmons, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said there were no indications of foul play, and that AT&T was investigating.
AT& T said in a statement that 911 service was “operating normally across affected areas in Louisiana and Mississippi following a disruption earlier today. We understand how important these services are and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
Jay Vise, a spokesman for the Orleans Parish Communication District in New Orleans, said the outage began just after 1:30 p.m. local time because of “a cut of fiber optic line” in Mississippi that supports 911 calls regionally. That disruption, he said, caused an outage there and in Louisiana.
Agencies across the affected states had advised the public during the emergency to use 10-digit numbers to contact law enforcement agencies in case of an emergency.
The emergency call center in Orleans Parish, La., which includes New Orleans, was back online by 4 p.m., Mr. Vise said.
Mr. Simmons said that several counties across Mississippi, including Warren, Lafayette and Simpson Counties, began reporting that their emergency operation centers were back online by 4 p.m.
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