CHEVERLY, Md. -- Phone service is back to normal at Prince George's Hospital Center, but for a while Monday, the hospital staff had to rely on some unusual methods of communication.

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Phone Outage Hampers Hospital

Hospital officials said the switchboard went down about noon. "Our main switchboard, which handles calls into and out of our hospital went down. At that point we went to our backup system," said hospital spokesman Bob Howell. "But the big issue with that is we have limited capacity with our backup system."

Within minutes the county office of emergency management sent out a call to its network of volunteer amateur radio operators.

Radio operators were also stationed at the county's emergency communications office as well as two other hospitals in the Dimensions Healthcare system, Laurel Regional Hospital and the Bowie Health Center.

Those facilities did not lose phone service, but they couldn't communicate with the Prince George's Hospital Center.

Investigators say they believe phone outage stemmed from a computer problem.

Phone service was restored about 10 p.m., Monday night.