Thousands of 911 calls attempted during Nevada outage
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — 911 dispatchers were unable to answer calls across multiple states Wednesday night.
This happened during National Public Safety Telecommunications Week, which is meant to celebrate those who answer those important emergency calls.
911 services in Nevada, South Dakota, and Nebraska were disrupted because the company behind the 911 systems Lumen said a third-party company had cut a line while trying to install a light pole in another state.
The outage started shortly before 7 p.m. PST in Nevada and lasted more than two hours. During that time, landline phones were not able to reach 911, but cell phones were still able to transmit contact information data when dialing the number.
“We know many agencies last night were taking that information and calling those citizens back in need of help,” Michael Martin, a safety technology consultant who founded RapidSOS, a service North Las Vegas Police use for their 911 services, explained. “So, this can come through not as 911 calling you but as a 10-digit number calling you from that agency.”
During the outage, nearly 2,100 attempted calls were made to 911 in Nevada, with 1,700 of those from the Las Vegas area. Clark County reports no known emergencies went unaddressed during the outage.
Although Clark County did activate a multi-agency coordination center and an alternative solution involving a different phone number was established but never used.
911 service was restored to Nevada and other states shortly after 9 p.m. PST.
The cause?
“We have heard from one of our nation’s telecom infrastructure providers Lumen that they did experience some sort of cut line affiliated by a third-party installation of a light pole,” said Martin.
Lumen sent 8 News Now a statement about the incident saying in part the light pole was unrelated to their services.
Martin said our 911 system is made up of about 6,000 911 agencies across the country and dates back to the 1950s.
“Getting from your device to a specific local agency sometimes you’re going from many different hops along the way. So different data centers, legacy phone lines a variety of steps along the way.”
Other ways to reach 911 include having Wi-Fi enabled calling activated on your cell phone or texting 911 during an emergency. In some situations, agencies may release a backup phone number you can call.
The outage that hit Nevada, South Dakota, and Nebraska is not the same that caused issues in Texas.
“The Office of the Governor is grateful for the swift response of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the Nevada Department of Public Safety in response to last night’s incident and for their unceasing efforts to protect Nevadans,” the Nevada Governor’s Office said in a statement Thursday.
The FCC said they are investigating the incident.
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