Widespread 911 Outages Are Reported in Four States

A large-scale outage Wednesday affected residents’ ability to call the 911 emergency number in parts of Nebraska and Texas, across the state of South Dakota and in Las Vegas, according to local authorities.

In Las Vegas, calls to 911 on landline and cell phones were unsuccessful for about two hours before service was restored around 9 p.m., the police said. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said on social networks.

During the outage, dispatchers could detect call attempts from cellphones and called residents back, police said, and all call attempts were answered.

The outage also affected southern Nevada, Nevada State Police said.

Outages were also reported by local police departments in Dundy, Kearney and Howard in Nebraska. All three said on Facebook between midnight and 12:30 a.m. that service had been restored. In Chase County, local officials said the line was down statewide for all cell phone carriers except T-Mobile, but landlines could still call.

The Del Rio, Texas, Police Department said customers of a cell phone provider were having trouble calling 911. A spokeswoman said the problem only affected T-mobile customers and that service had not yet been restored to these customers as of 1:15 p.m.

The South Dakota Department of Public Safety said on social media that the outage was affecting residents across the state. In most parts of the state, residents can still text 911 and call their local police and county sheriff’s offices on their non-emergency phone lines, the department said. Among the affected areas were Sioux Fall and Rapid City, where officials provided alternate numbers before the line returned.

Around 11 p.m., the The South Dakota Highway Patrol said on social networks, this service had been restored.

The cause of the outage was not immediately clear. In February, a widespread AT&T outage temporarily cut user connections across the United States for several hours, leaving FirstNet, the emergency communications network, out of service. Police forces like the New York Police Department were unable to make calls or send emails.

Isabelle Kwaireports contributed.