Phone, internet service disrupted Tuesday

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Telephone, Internet and 911 service in Carlton County was disrupted shortly after 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and it stayed that way for nearly nine hours.

Officials quickly figured out the problem was tied to people and businesses who had service with CenturyLink, formerly known as Qwest. An underground line accidentally was severed by a contractor who was working on a sewer line in Proctor, said Carrie Amman, a spokeswoman for CenturyLink.

Joe Addy, of Superior Computer Products, contracts with the city of Cloquet to manage its computers and information technology systems. He also contracts with about three dozen other businesses from Duluth to Cloquet. Addy said a number of his businesses in both cities had Internet issues.

“My office is showing a lot of red lights right now,” he said at about 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Affected communities included Cloquet, Barnum and Moose Lake. The Cloquet Police department phones were down, and the Carlton County Dispatch 911 service was also knocked out of commission for the second time in the past year (the last time was July 20, 2011). During the outage, Carlton County residents were advised to call local police and fire department numbers with their cell phones for emergency service. According to a press release, the 911 calls were re-routed to St. Louis County Communications who notified Carlton County Dispatch over the police radio.

Sheriff Kelly Lake said

911 service was restored about 7:20 p.m.

Tags: carlton county, news