Telecom Outage Disrupts 911 Service Across IA

Phone and internet outages were reported across Iowa after a water line break flooded a key telecommunications company building in downtown Des Moines. The outage began Thursday morning and continued into the afternoon, blocking 911 landline calls in the Des Moines area and calls to area hospitals. Cell phone calls to 911 were still being completed. The problems were blamed on a water line break at communication company Lumen Technologies’ building in downtown Des Moines. Water leaked through parts of the building, causing the outage in part because workers needed to power down equipment.