DPS investigating Monday’s multi-state 911 outage

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety Emergency Communication Networks (DPS-ECN) division is investigating a multi-state 911 outage that occurred Monday night, and is in contact with the state’s contracted 911 service provider, CenturyLink.

DPS said CenturyLink’s preliminary review determined 135 calls were made to 24 state public safety answering points that weren’t routed during the 48-minute disruption. DPS said its own preliminary review indicates the outage was longer and more 911 calls failed to be routed properly.

911 services restored in Minnesota, DPS reports

The cause of the outage remains under investigation but CenturyLink said the problem originated on a partnering vendor’s platform when an internal networking component failed to correctly forward traffic. CenturyLink told DPS the vendor is also investigating the incident.

Other states that reported a disruption to the 911 network included Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah, DPS said.

Minnesota’s 102 dispatch centers across the state have received 58,884 calls per week during the pandemic, on average, DPS said. The department encouraged Minnesotans to look up their county’s dispatch center number and save it in their phone or write it down and keep it next to the landline.

County dispatch numbers can be found at the link here.