A fiber cut caused a 911 system outage in parts of Wyoming last week.

The incident meant that residents had issues connecting to the emergency services operator from Monday (January 5) evening through to Wednesday (January 7) last week.

As reported by Cowboy State Daily, vandals cut a fiber line, resulting in the disruption of emergency calls in both Park and Big Horn counties.

It's not clear where the cuts occurred, with Lumen Technologies reportedly informing Park County communications supervisor and 911 manager Monte McClain in a voicemail message that the cut was in Jasper, Wyoming.

However, Cowboy State Daily also states that Brian Worthen, CEO of Visionary Broadband, one of Lumen’s other customers, was told the cable was cut 1.25 miles (2km) outside of Cody, which is more than 200 miles (321km) away from Jasper. 

“We struggle with getting updates with most providers, as they don’t want to admit fault or highlight inadequacies with their products/services,” said McClain.

Indeed, Park County Sheriff's Facebook page told residents in Park County to call a seemingly random cellphone number in order to be connected to the emergency services.

The scale of the outage is not known, nor is the number of people impacted.

“People couldn’t get ahold of us for about three hours,” McClain said. “I posted a cellphone number (on Facebook) for people to call us, because we didn’t have any other way for people to get ahold of us.

"We’re dealing with an antiquated system,” he added. “911 in Wyoming is using the same technology we’ve had since the 1970s — 57-year-old technology.”