Company with $36 million SD 911 contract says outage caused by Missouri light pole installation

A 911 outage affecting hundreds of calls for emergency services throughout South Dakota on Wednesday night was caused by a company installing a light pole in Kansas City, Missouri, according to South Dakota’s 911 telecommunications provider Lumen, formerly known as CenturyLink.

Lumen, which is headquartered in Louisiana, said the outage was caused by a third party but did not offer any further explanation about how the light pole installation caused the outage.

The outage included 911 services in South Dakota, Nebraska and Nevada. Another 911 service outage was reported in Texas, but Lumen said it does not provide 911 service there.

“Our techs identified the issue and worked hard to fix it as quickly as possible,” a company representative said in an email to South Dakota Searchlight. “We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate our customers’ patience and understanding.”

Lumen has had other 911 outages in South Dakota, Midwest

This is at least the second time there’s been a 911 service outage through Lumen in South Dakota this year. South Dakota signed its contract with Lumen for “Next Generation 911 services” in 2019 and has since renewed the contract until 2029. The contract is for up to $36.33 million.

An outage in January disrupted 911 service in southeastern South Dakota, leaving customers in Lincoln, Union, Miner and Minnehaha counties unable to call 911 with a landline for hours, according to reporting from Siouxland Proud. Last year, Lumen reported two separate fiber optic lines had been accidentally cut in Minneapolis and in Omaha, which blocked calls from being received by more than half of Nebraska’s 911 centers for about 10 hours.

After a 2020 outage in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, Utah and North Carolina, the Federal Communications Commission investigated whether Lumen, in addition to three other companies, failed to deliver 911 calls and timely notify public safety customers. In a settlement, Lumen agreed to implement a compliance plan and pay a $3.8 million civil penalty.

The FCC posted on X, formerly Twitter, Wednesday night that it was investigating the most recent outages.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel followed up with a statement Thursday: “When you call 911 in an emergency, it is vital that call goes through. The FCC has already begun investigating the 911 multi-state outages that occurred last night to get to the bottom of the cause and impact.”

Outage did not affect emergency response times, officials say

The Wednesday outage began around 8 p.m. Central time and service was restored by 11 p.m., according to the state Department of Public Safety. The outage forced public safety officials and dispatchers to quickly change how they responded to incoming calls for service across the state.

Sioux Falls Fire Assistant Chief Mike Gramlick said in a news conference Thursday the city had never experienced an outage of “this magnitude or duration.”

The city of Sioux Falls sent out a news release about the outage around 9 p.m., followed by a phone alert to area residents. During the time of the outage, the local dispatch received 112 calls for service — 79 phone calls, which were rerouted to a separate line, and 33 text messages, Gramlick said after the press conference.

That’s significantly more text messages for 911 services than normal, Gramlick added.

“Call if you can, text if you can’t. There are great uses for texting, chief among them domestic violence situations or if the caller has a hearing impairment,” Gramlick told South Dakota Searchlight.

He said the higher number of text messages indicated the effectiveness of the phone alert encouraging the use of texting, which remained operational during the outage.

“This would be a very clear indication of the effectiveness of the communications that went out,” Gramlick said.

In other areas of the state, such as Pennington County, which has its county seat in Rapid City, communications personnel used caller ID information to call people back immediately and respond to their needs. Chad Landis, office coordinator with Pennington County 911, said there was a delay of “less than seconds” in connecting with the caller and dispatching emergency services.

“Our dispatchers were able to continue to provide all of the emergency services without interruption,” Landis said, encouraging residents across South Dakota to save their local non-emergency phone number to their mobile contacts in case another outage occurs.

Sioux Falls aims to boost efficiency at state’s busiest regional 911 call center

Pennington County received 34 emergency phone calls during the outage — not including more than 100 “test” phone calls from the public that came in after the county sent alerts about the outage. The county also put out an alert Wednesday night asking people to stop making test calls. Landis said the non-emergency calls “presented some challenges.”

“On a normal working shift for a dispatcher, they’re handling phone calls while dispatching radio traffic and emergency services,” Landis said. “Getting a huge uptick in all these calls — 100 more than we normally would get during that time frame — puts additional stress on the staff already here.”

Landis said there were eight dispatchers monitoring phone lines at the start of the outage, but another four were called in to handle the additional call load.

Questions to the state Department of Public Safety regarding operations of the 911 text messaging service, why it was not affected by the outage and the role Lumen plays in 911 security have not yet been answered.

The representative with Lumen did not respond to South Dakota Searchlight questions regarding the company’s next steps or how the company plans to prevent more outages.