Iroquois County was without emergency 9-1-1 service from 3:40 Monday afternoon until about 1:30 Tuesday morning. A fiber optic line was taken out, eliminating 9-1-1 transmissions until repairs were made. Service is back in order…..it marked the second time in recent months a fiber optic line affected service in the county.

Verizon and AT&T cellphone customers were affected by the outage. Many parts of Iroquois County were without, but 9-1-1 Director Eric Raymond said back-up radio systems with respective police and fire departments and Kankakee County’s 9-1-1 Center (Kan Comm) kept things in check.

Raymond explained the cellphone and landline coverage areas were out of service until work crews could repair the fiber optic line. It’s most unfortunate, Raymond said, but our back-up systems kept emergency people in contact.

New technology could soon make texting available for the public to reach emergency responders.

Monday’s incident was a second such incident in which 9-1-1 service was eliminated due to an accident. In June, a construction crew hit a fiber optic near St. Anne….affecting Iroquois County service.

This time, it was traffic accident near Route 1 and Iroquois County Road 3150 N (west of Papineau) that took out the fiber optic. {There’s been no police report about the accident}.

94.1 WGFA