911 Service Restored In Mayes County After Outage

Parts of Green County are back online after a cell phone and Internet blackout. The outage was especially troubling for folks in Mayes and Delaware Counties, who couldn't call 911.

Almost as if it were spreading the news, a train whistled through town right as phone and Internet service was repaired in Mayes County.

“You take it for granted, but you come to realize they play a pretty big role in what we do every day,” said Seth Knighton with Roberts Auto Center.

The outage didn't shut down Roberts Auto Center, but Knighton said his car dealership relies almost entirely on phone and Internet service, and with neither, his team had to revert back to the good, old-fashioned way of doing business.

“We'll help you out whether we have computers or not,” Knighton said. “Write it down on a big chief tablet. “It's been a little bit wild, it's definitely been difficult. It's shown us how valuable our Internet and telephone is to us.”

The root of the problem came from a fiber optic line buried just off Highway 69 in Pryor.

Emergency Management Deputy Director, Mike Dunham, said the line somehow got cut, cutting off communication to the county's 911 dispatch center.

Dunham said all Mayes County calls were re-routed to Rogers County dispatch and the only option for those with an emergency, who couldn't get a call out, was to physically go to their nearest fire station or police department.

“This is our backup to our system and we have no other way of contact and we hate to say, 'well we want you to go to those places,' but that is the quickest solution,” Dunham said.

Service was down for about five hours before AT&T fixed the botched line, which was about 1,000 feet from its Pryor office.

Dunham said the line has been cut two other times in the past few years, the problems then were blamed on contractors.

Dunham said AT&T is going to put in a backup line on the other side of town.