SARASOTA — Comcast customers in Sarasota and Manatee counties experienced a service outage late Thursday afternoon due to a newly placed fiber optic line being cut during Hurricane Ian cleanup.

Comcast's Vice President of Public Relations Mindy Kramer confirmed Thursday afternoon that a cable or line had been mistakenly cut by cleaning crews in an area of Sarasota.

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"We just suffered a significant fiber cut to one of the new fiber lines we had put in place following the storm that allowed us to restore services in a number of areas," she said. "This is a very challenging phase of restoration because we are seeing our new lines get cut inadvertently by power company crews as well as debris removal trucks. 

The fiber cut impacted Sebring, Manatee, Sarasota, Venice, and Port Charlotte, Kramer said. 

By 5:50 p.m., the repairs were complete and service began to come online, according to Kramer.

Typically restorations for fiber optics take hours or up to a day to restore, however, Kramer said crews were able to restore services to impacted customers in less than three hours.

Samantha Gholar covers social justice news for the Herald-Tribune and USA TODAY Network. Connect with her at sgholar@gannett.com or on Twitter: @samanthagholar