911 services restored after outages in Louisiana, Mississippi

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

911 systems in Louisiana and Mississippi went down Thursday

AT&T confirmed fiber line damage caused the outage

Services were restored by late afternoon, officials said

Local agencies shared alternative emergency contact numbers

911 systems across Mississippi and Louisiana are back online after going down Thursday afternoon, an AT&T spokesperson said.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said AT&T was reporting damage to some of its fiber optic lines and that was affecting 911 services across the state. Across Louisiana, 911 phone lines were also down for some time. The state’s most populous cities, including Baton Rouge and New Orleans , reported emergency system outages Thursday afternoon.

“We understand how important these services are and apologize to o