Nome police phone lines and 911 are working again after an early Thursday outage

The Nome Police Department's phone lines, including 911, are working again after an outage early Thursday, the department said in a Facebook update.

In a post at 1:34 am Thursday, the department said it was "experiencing difficulties" with 911 and its main line, 907-443-5262. It told anyone needing police, EMS or fire help to call 907-304-1192 instead and said it would keep the public informed. The department later updated the post to say the phone lines were back up.

The department didn't say what caused the problem or how long the lines were down.

Nome residents were sent to that same backup number six days earlier. On Oct. 23, the department said in a Facebook notice that storm activity and citywide power outages had left its main landlines inoperable. It asked callers to use 907-304-1192 to reach dispatch.

Alaska News reported on Oct. 23 that Nome lost power citywide during that storm after one generator shut itself down while a second was offline for maintenance.