Cole County 911 phone service restored

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Emergency phone lines were restored Wednesday afternoon in Cole County after an outage that began in the morning and also affected Boone County.

Jefferson City Police Lt. Curtis Finke said a little before 4 p.m. Wednesday that service for the city and Cole County had been restored by communication carrier Brightspeed.

"There was no disruption or delay in emergency services provided by the Jefferson City Police Department 911 Center during the outage," Finke said.

Boone County Joint Communications issued an alert at about 11:20 a.m. saying that 911 phone service was unavailable. People in need of emergency help are asked to call 311 instead.

Boone County Office of Emergency Management said in a news release the issue is caused by a disruption with Brightspeed.

Jefferson City Police Department posted on Facebook on Wednesday morning that 911 calls are still being received but are being rerouted.

Both counties said Brightspeed is working to fix the problem, but an estimated restoration time is unknown.

Check back for updates to this developing story.