Spokane unaffected by nationwide 911 outage; CenturyLink says it’s fixing problem

BOISE – Federal and Washington state regulators said Friday they have started investigations into a nationwide CenturyLink internet outage that disrupted 911 service.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai called the outage that began Thursday “completely unacceptable” because people who needed help couldn’t use the emergency number.

“Its breadth and duration are particularly troubling,” he said.

The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau will investigate the cause and effect of the outage, he said.

Cellphone alerts notified Washington residents about the outage late Thursday. The outage affected emergency services in the Seattle area until early Friday morning, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office, but the Spokane Police Department said 911 services were not affected locally.

Officials across the state urged people to refrain from calling 911 to test whether the system was working.

CenturyLink spokeswoman Debra Peterson said the outage “is not related to hacking,” but she declined further comment.

The company said on Twitter it was working to restore service and appeared to be making progress. It hasn’t provided a cause for the problems.

“Where CenturyLink is the 911 service provider 911 calls are completing,” the company said in a tweet.

The Monroe, Louisiana-based telecommunications giant is one of the largest in the United States. It offers communications and information technology services in dozens of states. Customers from New York to California reported outages.

Washington regulators also said they were opening an investigation into an outage of its statewide 911 service.

The state Utilities and Transportation Commission said interruptions began about 8:30 p.m. Thursday. The commission’s regulatory services division director, Mark Vasconi, said the system appeared stable Friday, but the agency was monitoring it.

In Idaho, Emergency Office Management Director Brad Richy said he hadn’t received any reports of 911 service failures, but some state agencies, including the Department of Correction, lost service on internet-based phones.

Some businesses in Idaho also lost the ability to make credit card sales, and some ATM machines weren’t working in Idaho and Montana.

Due to sporadic 911 outages in Massachusetts, public safety officials recommended individuals looking for emergency help use the 10-digit telephone number of the fire or police departments they wanted to contact.

In Greeley, Colorado, the Weld County Regional Communication Center on Friday said 911 calls were being dropped, but callers should keep trying and emergency dispatchers would try to call back.

The 911 dispatch center and emergency management in western Missouri’s Johnson County were hit by the outage, county Emergency Management Director Troy Armstrong said Friday. He said the 911 lines were not affected, but the internet was down at the dispatch center and phone services also were spotty.

Due to a similar six-hour outage blamed on CenturyLink in April 2014, more than 10 million people in Washington, Minnesota and North Carolina were unable to make calls to 911, according to the FCC, which ordered the company to pay $16 million to resolve the matter.