BOISE, Idaho — Many CenturyLink customers across the U.S. were without internet service amid a lengthy outage that even affected some Verizon customers.

The outage began early in the day Thursday but by late Thursday night, the company tweeted that its engineers had identified a “network element” that was affecting services and expected to fully restore services within hours.

Pacific County, Washington, residents received automated phone calls and emergency text notifications Thursday night that the 911 emergency number was likely to be inoperable, the Chinook Observer reported. A follow-up notification about 8:30 a.m. today advised residents that service had been restored.

The Oregonian and The Columbian reported that the Clark County, Washington, 911 center was down Thursday night, and that the outages appeared to be affecting 911 services statewide.

Residents in Clark County were not alerted of widespread 911 outages through a wireless emergency alert system until almost three hours after the county’s emergency services agency appeared to have first acknowledged its 911 center phone lines were compromised, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.

Other areas of the country also experiencing 911 outages included parts of Missouri, Idaho and Arizona.

Monroe, Louisiana-based CenturyLink didn’t provide details of the problem and it didn’t indicate how many customers were affected. Customers from New York to California reported outages.

Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, said via Twitter it was a nationwide outage and her agency needed to investigate.

In Idaho, the internet problems caused the temporary shutdown of phone services at the Idaho Department of Correction and the state’s Department of Education, The Idaho Statesman reported .

Some ATM machines weren’t working in Idaho and Montana.

At North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley, Colorado, doctors and nurses for a time had difficulty accessing patient records. Rather than using digital devices, they had to take notes with pencil and paper, according to the Greeley Tribune .

WyoLotto officials said they would postpone announcing Wyoming’s winning state lottery numbers and winnings for the day until after the outage was over.

Verizon said it had service interruptions in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and parts of Montana as a result of issues with CenturyLink. Verizon said CenturyLink helps handle wireless network data traffic for Verizon and other wireless providers.