Norman residents lost access to 911 service Wednesday, Sept. 23, as an AT&T network failure knocked out emergency call systems across Oklahoma.

The Norman Police Department (NPD) posted an advisory on the city's website at 6 p.m., directing anyone needing emergency help to call 405-321-1444 instead of 911. The department said calls to 911 should automatically reroute to a dispatcher but warned callers would need to stay on the line until someone answered.

Four hours later, the problem had not been fixed.

In a 10 p.m. update posted on X, NPD said the outage had been confirmed as affecting much of the state and appeared to stem from a phone provider's system. The department told residents to keep using 405-321-1444 for all emergency calls "until further notice."

The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said the routing issue began around 4 p.m. Sept. 23, causing some 911 calls to be misrouted to other parts of the state, KOCO reported. By about 4:20 p.m., 911 centers had begun routing calls through backup 10-digit phone lines.

AT&T confirmed the network problem in a statement to News 9, saying wireline calls to 911 in Oklahoma "may not complete successfully." The company said wireless calls were being rerouted and encouraged customers to use a mobile device if their home phone was not working. AT&T did not provide an estimated time for full restoration.

The outage hit at least 19 communities and counties, including Norman, Cleveland County, McClain County, Yukon, Chickasha, Duncan and Woodward County, according to News 9. Oklahoma City's police department said it was not affected, KOCO reported.

Cleveland County's backup emergency number during the outage was 405-701-8916.

No restoration confirmation from NPD or the city had been published as of Thursday, Sept. 24.

NPD said updates would be distributed through the city's RAVE notification system and posted at normanok.gov.