Large-Scale Outage Affects 911 Calls in Nebraska, Texas, South Dakota, and Las Vegas

A widespread outage on Wednesday disrupted residents’ ability to call 911 in parts of Nebraska, Texas, South Dakota, and Las Vegas, causing concern for emergency response capabilities.

In Las Vegas, both landline and mobile phone calls to 911 were not connecting for about two hours before service was restored at 9 p.m., according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Dispatchers were able to see attempted calls from mobile phones and would call residents back, ensuring that all emergency calls were answered during the outage.

The outage also affected southern Nevada, as reported by the Nevada State Police. In Nebraska, local police departments in Dundy, Kearney, and Howard confirmed outages but announced that service had been restored by early morning hours.

In Texas, the police department of Del Rio stated that customers of one cellular provider, specifically T-mobile, were experiencing issues calling 911. Service had not yet been restored to those customers as of 1:15 a.m.

The South Dakota Department of Public Safety confirmed that the outage impacted residents throughout the entire state. While most parts of the state could still text 911 and call local police and county sheriff offices on nonemergency lines, the outage caused significant disruptions. The South Dakota Highway Patrol later announced that service had been restored by 11 p.m.

This outage comes on the heels of a widespread AT&T outage in February that left users across the United States without service for hours, impacting emergency communications networks like FirstNet. Law enforcement agencies, including the New York Police Department, were unable to make calls or send emails during that incident.