Phone service restored to Boone County 911 operations
Jazsmin Halliburton
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Boone County Presiding Commissioner Kip Kendrick announced Monday afternoon on X that service has been restored to Boone County Joint Communications services.
Lumen has restored service. BCJC should be receiving calls without issue again. https://t.co/CMGuZYFQEA
— Kip Kendrick (@Kip_Kendrick) May 4, 2026
BCJC services were disrupted early Monday after a fiber line was cut at around 3 a.m.
Fiber owner Lumen said the problem was apparently “caused by vandals” and crews were working to fix the problem, though a restoration time was not available.
The Jefferson City Police Department tells ABC 17 News they have not heard reports of the damage being found in Jefferson City.
BCJC Director Christie Davis said over email that the issue was reported as a Lumen Technology fiber cable was cut, affecting all emergency, non-emergency and outgoing calls from Joint Communications.
Davis reports that the outage occurred in Jefferson City, with JCPD lines being affected. She adds that BCJC works with JCPD during technical issues.
“During those incidents, we deploy emergency telecommunicators to their location to take the calls and coordinate with employees in our communications center for dispatching services,” Davis said. “However, this also impacted Jefferson City and several agencies and departments within Boone County. Therefore, there are limited contingency capabilities in this incident.”
During the outage, BCJC operators were notified of dropped calls and called residents back.
“If there was an incident where the call did not come in, we were making outbound calls on our supervisor’s phone to make sure that we were getting in contact with those individuals to get them the assistance that they needed,” Davis said. “There were no calls that should have went unanswered.”
Jefferson City Public Information Coordinator Molly Bryan said that 911 operations were not affected by the outage, but administrative phone lines were down.
A Public Safety Alert was issued stating that Boone County 911 was experiencing complications early Monday morning.
“We do not currently have an estimated resolution timeframe, but we were notified that a crew is on site and conducting further testing to isolate the exact point of failure to begin the repairs,” Davis stated in an email.
The Columbia Police Department asked anyone with emergencies to call 911 on Monday, even though 911 phone lines were down.
CPD spokesman Colin Imhoff said the department still wants people with emergencies to call 911 because dispatchers are tracking incoming calls and calling those people back. Anyone needing non-emergency services is encouraged to go to their local law enforcement office.
A news release from the Boone County Office of Emergency Management said the outage is also affecting some hospitals and public safety agencies. Boone Health spokesperson Christian Basi told ABC 17 News in an email that phones appeared to be working at the hospital Monday morning.
MU Health Care said on Facebook some of its clinics are experiencing “intermittent phone issues.” The hospital system said its main hospital line is not affected.
The alert was sent around 4:30 a.m. Monday. The alert states that if your first call to 911 does not work, hang up and immediately call again.
The alert also said that 311 is not working.
MUPD issued an alert at 7:27 a.m. stating it was also experiencing issues.
Davis adds that BCJC is currently updating their operating system with AT&T ESInet. The upgrade is expected to be completed in the summer and will feature a backup plan in place for fiber-optic outages.
“The previous incidents that we’ve had where we had a single point of failure between here and Jeff City, those incidents will be less frequent if not at all,” Davis said.