Thurston County 911 out of service Tuesday evening
Thurston County 911 Communications was out of service Tuesday evening, prevented residents from calling their dispatch center.
The outage lasted about four hours starting around 5 p.m., Executive Director Keith Flewelling said.
During the outage, calls were rerouted to an alternate 911 center in Spokane which in turn contacted Thurston County dispatch via cell phones. Services were completely restored about 9 p.m. and no calls were missed, he said.
“The important thing is we don’t think we missed any 911 calls,” Flewelling said. “We have systems in place that make sure we don’t drop calls, so that seemed to work well.”
Flewelling attributed the outage to an equipment failure that affected their ability to process calls. He said staff are still investigating the root cause of the failure.
“The short story is, when we buy mission critical equipment, we always put in redundant systems,” Flewelling said. “And for whatever reason, this redundancy did not work as it was designed.”
Thurston County Emergency Management and multiple other local agencies reported the outage on their social media accounts.
Anytime residents cannot connect with 911 services, officials advise they call their local fire and police departments directly. Residents should only call 911 in the event of an emergency and not “test” the system, according to Emergency Management.
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 7:42 AM.
