Afternoon update from our news partner The Seattle Times:
UPDATE: 1:20 p.m. |A team of CenturyLink technicians is investigating the cause of a hours-long interruption of 911 services across Washington early today.
“This is very serious. Our customers’ safety is our top priority,” said Jan Kampbell, CenturyLink’s spokeswoman for Western Washington.
The service interruption was detected about 1 a.m., and by 8 a.m., the company reported that service was fully restored to all 911 centers. During the interruption, some calls to 911 did go through to emergency services, but other calls got only a busy signal, Kampbell said.
Early reports linked the problem to a service interruption in Sheridan, Ore., but Kampbell said that was a separate and unrelated problem.
Update 7:52 a.m. King County says 9-1-1 restored.
Update 7:15 a.m. CenturyLink says 9-1-1 restored.
—————————–
At 4:50 a.m. King County announced that the 9-1-1 emergency dispatch system is down in Oregon and Washington, including King County.
If you have an emergency and are unable to get through to 9-1-1, call the following phone numbers in King County for your location.
Seattle: 206-583-2111
From the Associated Press/Seattle Times:
Emergency 911 service is down in most of the state of Washington.
A spokeswoman for CenturyLink, Kerry Zimmer, says the problem began about 1:30 a.m. Thursday at Sheridan, Ore., and Oregon was affected for a time.
She says the outage affects 911 dispatch centers throughout the state of Washington.
CenturyLink is working to find the cause of the problem and fix it.
At this time, there is no estimate for service restoration.
In the meantime, Zimmer recommends that people with an emergency try a 911 call from a cell phone, which sometimes works better than a land line.
As of 9:15am, the State of Washington EOC (Emergency Operations Center) reported that E911 service had been fully restored.