A widespread outage left a swath of southeastern Minnesota without 911 service for about five hours Monday.

CenturyLink, the state's 911 service provider, found a large fiber line cut near Green Bay, Wis., which affected service in eight Minnesota counties: Dodge, Freeborn, Mower, Olmsted, Rice, Steele, Wabasha and Winona.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety's Emergency Communications Networks division was alerted to the issue around 3 p.m., and crews made repairs Monday evening, according to Amber Schindeldecker, a Minnesota Department of Public Safety spokeswoman.

The division said in an 8:20 p.m. Facebook post that service had been restored.

During the outage, emergency 911 calls were coming through to centers and dispatchers could answer calls, but they could not hear callers speaking, according to a Facebook post by the division. Callers were advised to call nonemergency numbers.

Local law enforcement agencies took to social media Monday afternoon to report the outage and direct callers to nonemergency numbers.

The Rochester Police Department learned of the outage just before 4 p.m. Monday, according to spokeswoman Amanda Grayson. Dispatch had called back everyone who called during the outage, she said.

Alex Chhith