An Internet outage late yesterday morning caused chaos not only in Bates County, but appeared across a wide area affecting several adjacent states. This led to closures of not only some local businesses, but county offices as well. Since the internet carries the bulk of phone service, it too was not working, which led to some swift action by local authorities- case in point, the Butler police department and the Bates County Sheriff’s Office switched over to cell phones to keep in contact with the public.
Interestingly, 911 remained in service throughout the day, which is fortunate. It seems a new contingency plan may be put in place in the event (and it certainly could) happen again.
While details of the exact cause are not readily available, it does appear a primary fiber optic cable was accidentally cut resulting in the interruption of service.
An all clear was sounded shortly before 10 pm last night stating that repairs were complete.
