Carbon County Communications Center's 911 service was down for about six hours beginning at about 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

County 911 director Gary Williams said early Monday that the outage was triggered by a problem with Verizon's equipment."It affected everyone at first, then it affected Jim Thorpe, Nesquehoning, Summit Hill, and Lansford in Carbon County, and Coaldale and Kline townships and McAdoo in Schuylkill. It seemed like Verizon had an issue at their Bloomsburg office," he said.Efforts to reach Verizon spokesman Sheldon Jones were unsuccessful early Monday.The county was prepared to handle the outage, Williams said."We've been through this drill before. We had procedures in place," he said.Williams said there were no major emergencies during the outage.Carbon immediately routed any 911 calls through Monroe County, and made sure fire stations were manned, said county Emergency Management Coordinator Mark Nalesnik."Fire departments were opened so people could go to their fire station, knowing that someone would be on standby," he said.The direct numbers for local fire stations and ambulance companies were circulated via Blue Ridge Cable TV 13 and through various social media, including Facebook.