Clark County 911 phone service back up after outage
April 10--Phone service to 911 in Clark County is back open after lines went down for several hours this morning.
Dispatchers began noticing that they were not receiving 911 calls about 1 a.m., according to Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency Director Anna Pendergrass.
The statewide problem began around the same time that a technical issue was reported for CenturyLink customers in Oregon, which crashed the entire 911 system in Oregon.
"We don't know at this point if the Oregon outage and the Washington outage are connected or if they're two separate instances," said Jan Kampbell, spokeswoman for CenturyLink. She said the agency is investigating the problem as if they are unrelated to make sure that the issue doesn't happen again.
By about 6:30 a.m., however, Pendegrass said that it appeared that the 911 lines are starting to come back into service, though service was sporadic in several areas of the county. By 9:30 a.m., dispatchers announced over the scanner that service had been restored.
Clark County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Duncan Hoss said he didn't know yet if there were any emergency situations made worse by the downed number.
He said the incident is a good reminder to save emergency numbers, such as area fire station numbers, at home and in cell phones.
"If 911 goes down, you aren't in the dark, there are other options," he said. "We need to train ourselves that there are other options.
Copyright 2014 - The Columbian, Vancouver, Wash.
