Widespread 911 Outages Are Reported in Four States

A large-scale outage is affecting residents’ ability to call the 911 emergency number in parts of Nebraska and Texas, and the entire state of South Dakota, according to local authorities.

In Las Vegas, calls to 911 on landline phones and mobile phones were not connecting for about two hours before service was restored at about 9 p.m., the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said on social media.

During the outage, dispatchers could see attempts to make calls from mobile phones and would call residents back, the police said, and all attempted calls had been answered.

The outage was also affecting southern Nevada, the Nevada State Police said.

Outages were also reported by the local police departments of Dundy County, Neb., Kearney County, Neb., Howard County, Neb., Fremont, Neb., and Del Rio, Texas.

The South Dakota Department of Public Safety said on social media that the outage was affecting residents throughout the entire state. In most parts of the state, residents could still text 911, and call their local police and county sheriff offices on their nonemergency phone lines, the department said.

In February, a widespread AT&T outage temporarily cut off connections for users across the United States for many 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.

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