Workers installing a light pole in Missouri cut a fiber optic line, causing the suspension of 911 service for emergency agencies in Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota, a company official in charge of the wiring said Thursday.
Problems with 911 calls in a Texas city on the U.S.-Mexico border were not related to the case, authorities said, but the widespread outage raised concerns about the cause of the problems.
For most organisms, it turned out to be the product of simple human error.
In Kansas City, Missouri, workers installing a light pole for another company on Wednesday cut a Lumen Technologies fiber optic line, Mark Molzen, director of global affairs for Lumen, said in an email to The Associated Press. Service resumed within two and a half hours, he said. No 911 failures were reported in Kansas City.
Meanwhile, the difficulties experienced by some cell phone callers to 911 in Del Rio, Texas, apparently were due to an outage related to the cell phone service provider and not the 911 system, said Peter Ojeda, city spokesperson. Lumen does not provide 911 service in Texas.
The outages prompted an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency said in a statement. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which manages the National 911 Program, said in a statement that its Office of Emergency Medical Services “is monitoring the matter.”
The outages caused confusion for some people trying to contact emergency services.
Police in Dundy County, Nebraska, warned in a social media post last night that callers to 911 would receive a busy signal, and urged people to call the administrative hotline. About three hours later, authorities said 911 mobile and landline services had been restored.
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2024-04-20 06:39:19