A severed fiber-optic cable near Nevada disrupted Emergency 911 number service Tuesday in several Iowa counties, including Story County.

All long distance services, including the Emergency 911 telephone service, were down for more than four hours, according to a Story County sheriff’s office press release.

“There was a fiber-optic cable that was cut on the edge of Nevada near the Union Pacific railroad tracks,” said Nevada Police Chief Mark See.

See said the cut line disrupted service in a nine to 10 county area. He said local calls still could be made, but 911 and long distance calls were not possible.

Marilyn Polito, nursing director in the Mary Greeley Medical Center emergency department, said Mary Greeley had enough back-up systems that normal operation was possible without the 911 services.

“Our 911 system was down for … around an hour, but we did not experience any problems,” Polito said.

Todd Willert, administrator at the Story County Hospital, 630 Sixth St., Nevada, said his hospital experienced many difficulties during the five hours of disconnection.

“It wasn’t just 911 — it was the whole telephone deal,” Willert said. “The telephone thing really created all sorts of havoc around here.”

He said it didn’t cause much of a problem for the paramedics because they carried radios and were in contact with the Story County dispatch at all times.

For emergencies, Nevada residents could call the local 382 prefix non-emergency number for the police department.

Residents of smaller towns such as Colo and Zearing, which rely on Ames and Nevada for emergency service, could not call 911 or the Nevada or Ames non-emergency numbers for help.

“It was a greater risk in these towns if someone was in need of emergency services,” See said.

Lori Morrissey of Story County Emergency Management was involved in handling the situation.

She said emergency management notified all the fire departments in the county and publicized their phone numbers.

“They did have local numbers in the community — the problem was they weren’t published,” Morrissey said.

Volunteers had to be sent to the fire stations to man the phones during the out-of-service hours.

“As far as I know, we hadn’t heard that anyone suffered from the loss,” she said.

See said despite the service outage, he is not aware of any problems in areas where emergency contact was completely out.

“I think we were very fortunate,” he said.

See said he thinks problems could occur again in the future if precautionary action is not taken.

“The sheriff had concerns because of higher risk to outlying areas,” he said. See said Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald has plans to improve emergency services in the county.