Missoula County’s 911 call center experienced an outage for three full hours early Thursday morning. Shortly after midnight, all lines at the call center stopped operating.
Adriane Beck, the Director for the Missoula Office of Emergency Management, says 911 outages aren’t that uncommon.
"We typically have one to three 911 outages in a year," explains Beck. But she says usually during those outages, backup systems in place will redirect incoming calls.
This time, those backup systems failed to kick in.
Beck says they’re still not sure why the outage occurred, or why the backup lines were also affected.
"There was a scheduled maintenance that was occurring that we were well aware of," says Beck. "But we did not anticipate, nor did they, or our 911 center, that we would have any disruption to our 911 service during that time."
The 911 outage was considered a county-wide emergency and an emergency message was issued to 32,000 phones to alert citizens of an alternate number to call to reach 911 dispatchers.
Beck says registering to receive emergency alerts through Smart 911 is critically important.
"It is the best way to receive notification of these types of incidences as well as other types of emergencies that may be impactful to our citizens and their families and their ultimate safety," says Beck.
During the three-hour outage, 25 calls were made to the alternate line. The Missoula 911 center typically receives 10 to 20 emergency calls at that time of night.
The 911 lines were fully restored shortly after 3 a.m. and the Missoula Office of Emergency Management is investigating the cause of the outage.
