Phone lines and internet down more than 24 hours at Louisville city offices

LOUISVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – For more than 24 hours, all city office public LAN lines in Louisville were down, along with the internet service at city hall and the 911 center.

City officials say service was restored at around 1:30 p.m. but for almost 30 hours, all city businesses had to run through the Louisville Winston County 911 Operations Center.

It was around 9 a.m. Monday when employees at Louisville’s city hall and 911 center made the unfortunate discovery.

“We just came in yesterday morning and had no internet service,” says Assistant Louisville Police Chief Ed Hunt.

“Completely shut down everything as far as our calls into the office, calls in for the chief of police, for the officers,” says LPD Office Administrator Leslie Loving. “Day-to-day accident reports, incident reports, just everything. Emails, we were not able to do anything.”

Loving says it was the same all throughout city hall.

Residents were told to call the 911 center’s non-emergency line, where they connected callers with their requested city department via cell phone.

“We transfer the calls over to the city, the police department, and some on the court side, city hall,” 911 coordinator Felicia Mays says. “Everybody’s got their own line.”

Mays says her team of operators was responsible for connecting Louisville residents with the city, even while dealing with outage issues themselves.

“With the internet, that’s kind of delaying us with faxing, printing, emailing,” she says.

Mays says her staff was able to handle all emergency and non-emergency calls during that span of nearly 30-hours.

“Felicia and the 911 dispatchers, they always come through in such times as this,” Loving says.

City officials say they still aren’t sure what exactly caused the problem Monday. Repair crews classified it as some kind of glitch.