A damaged phone line left South Whidbey businesses and residents without long distance and Internet service Wednesday.

The shutdown was extensive, and lasted between 1:43 p.m. and 10:33 p.m. Emergency calls to 911 dispatchers were also affected.

Julia DeMartini, vice president of Whidbey Telecom, said the company experienced a service disruption as a result of one or more fiber optic cables being damaged by construction. The lines, operated by Verizon Northwest, Inc., were located in central Whidbey near Lagoon Point.

The affected lines carried interexchange toll trunks serving Whidbey Telephone Company’s South Whidbey exchange area.

Those facilities also carry some, but not all, of the trunks providing 911 calls for local callers in the South Whidbey exchange.

Callers were still able to access 911 service, although the number of simultaneous calls to 911 that could be handled was reduced, DeMartini said.

Banks were especially hit hard by the outage as bank tellers could not access customers’ account information or make transfers.

“The effect was pretty huge – no access to customer info,” said Meggan Lubach, lead teller at the Wells Fargo branch in Freeland. The bank had to send some customers to their branch in Coupeville for urgent business.

Customers of U.S. Bank in Freeland said the bank would let only a few people in at a time and the bank locked its doors because their security system was linked to the phone lines.

Whidbey Island Bank in Langley had the same challenges. They handled people’s receipts but could not give people up-to-date balances or other customer information, said Letta Meaux, a Whidbey Island Bank employee.

In some stores, customers could not use their credit or debit cards.

Other stores lucked out.

“We have satellite,” said Patty Sauvageau, who works at the Shell Station in Freeland.

“People came in all day asking if our machines work. We had no trouble,” she said.

In the age of Internet and instant, high-tech communication, a day offline caused quite a few headaches. The outage kept the sheriff’s office busy as deputies patrolled the South End frequently and checked in with businesses and banks to make sure things were in order.

“Better keep an eye on things and take care of it then than having to investigate later,” said Sheriff Mike Hawley.

Hawley said no extra deputies were called in to work.