Jonathan Brunt, Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA)

Spokane County’s 911 system was placed back in regular operation Thursday afternoon.

Emergency communications operators had been taking calls out of the system’s backup center north of the city of Spokane since the 911 phone system crashed Monday evening.

Technicians from CenturyLink, who operate the phone lines, fixed the problem Wednesday, said Kerry Zimmer, a CenturyLink marketing director based in Spokane. She said the company is continuing an investigation into the cause of the outages.

Operators moved back to the main Emergency Communications building, 1620 N. Rebecca St., about 2:30 p.m. after thorough testing was completed, said Lorlee Mizell, director of Spokane County 911 Emergency Communications.

The system failed Monday as a result of a faulty data switch. A backup system failed as a result of a different technical problem, Mizell said.

911 and Crime Check lines went dead about 6:40 p.m. Monday and were out of service until the backup center was activated about 40 minutes later. Crime Check is the non-emergency police reporting line.

Mizell said it remains unclear how many calls were missed as a result of the outage. 

November 30, 2012

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