BLOOMSBURG — An outage knocked out phone service on Tuesday morning and afternoon to some businesses, hospitals and government agencies in Columbia County Tuesday, including the Press Enterprise.

The outage was caused by an early morning car accident in the Stillwater area, which severed a fiber-optic line, according to a Frontier spokeswoman. Some phone service had been restored by 4 p.m., while full service was expected to return by 6 p.m., she said.

Those who lost phone service, according to County Commissioner Dave Kovach, included:

• Columbia County's governmental offices. The county's 9-1-1 center maintained phone service through the outage.

• Berwick Hospital

• Berwick Area School District

• Press Enterprise

Phone service has returned at the newspaper.