Cause of 911 Service Disruption Identified

Workers installing a light pole in Missouri cut into a fiber line, knocking out 911 service for emergency agencies in South Dakota as well as parts of Nebraska and Nevada. The mistake was reported Thursday by the company that operates the fiber line. The line was damaged Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri. While it didn’t impact Kansas City, the damage resulted in the loss of 911 service in three states. Problems with 911 calls in a Texas city along the U.S. border with Mexico were unrelated, but the widespread outage created concerns about what was causing the problems. On Wednesday night, the outages created confusion for people trying to reach several communications agencies.