Emergency authorities across Central Florida reported a widespread outage of mobile 911 and non-emergency phone lines on 8 July, leaving callers in several counties temporarily unable to reach dispatchers. Officials in Citrus, Lake, Marion and Osceola counties, as well as the cities of Ocala and Leesburg, said the disruption began shortly after 2 p.m. Eastern and was confirmed publicly around 4 p.m. The problem does not affect Seminole, Volusia, Orange or Flagler counties, according to local agencies. During the outage, residents who need immediate assistance are advised to send a text message to 911 or place calls from a landline, which remains operational. Authorities have not yet identified the cause of the technical failure but said engineers are working to restore full service. Agencies will provide further updates once phone connections are re-established. No timeline for a complete fix had been announced by early evening.