The Associated Press
SEATTLE — A 9-1-1 outage this month that affected about 20 call centers across seven counties, including Clallam and Jefferson, was caused by an error in a vendor’s network router, officials said.
Washington Military Department spokesperson Karina Shagren said Wednesday about 2,000 calls were made to 9-1-1 during the almost hourlong outage Dec. 9 and 92 of those callers received a busy signal, The Seattle Times reported.
About half of the 2,000 callers were directed to the correct call center and others were routed to an alternative 9-1-1 call center, she said.
In addition to Clallam and Jefferson counties, the outage affected King, Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom and Kitsap counties.
The state’s Emergency Management Division, part of the Washington Military Department, opened an investigation with Comtech Telecommunications, which the state contracts with to provide call management and 9-1-1 routing services.
Shagren declined to share a “root cause analysis” report Wednesday.
The Washington Military Department transitioned away from its previous provider, CenturyLink, after the state experienced a 30-minute systemwide 9-1-1 outage in October 2020, affecting 1,445 calls.
State and federal regulators also investigated outages in 2014 and 2018 under CenturyLink.
On Dec. 16, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson submitted testimony to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission calling for the company to be penalized $7.2 million, alleging it is to blame for the technological failures that led to the 2018 outage, which affected 10,752 calls over a nearly 50-hour period.
