Residents in at least three states found themselves unable to place emergency 911 calls on Wednesday evening as widespread outages affected South Dakota, Nevada, and Texas. The interruption in service left many communities vulnerable and sparked fears and confusion among residents.
The Rapid City Police Department in South Dakota announced that the entire statewide emergency calling system had experienced an outage, stating, “911 SERVICES DOWN STATEWIDE: South Dakota State Radio has advised us that 911 services are currently down statewide.”
In Nevada, cities as large as Las Vegas were also impacted by the outages. The Las Vegas Police Department (LVMPD) advised residents to dial 911 on mobile devices, explaining that while they would be able to see the caller’s number and call them back, landline 911 calls were not working. Service was eventually restored in Las Vegas at around 12:15 a.m. on Thursday, with the LVMPD confirming they had called back everyone who attempted to reach 911 during the outage.
Multiple cities in Texas, including Del Rio and Kilgore, also reported 911 service disruptions. The Del Rio Police Department attributed the issue to a problem with the “carrier” rather than the city’s systems, while the Kilgore Police Department posted on Facebook about intermittent outages and provided an alternative number for residents to report emergencies.
Social media was abuzz with rumors and speculation, with initial reports suggesting that as many as eight states had been affected, including Florida, Kentucky, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department even tweeted that they were aware of outages across the country but confirmed that their own 911 system was functioning properly.
The cause of the widespread 911 outages remains unclear, with some officials pointing to issues with telecommunications carriers.
