Chelan County 911 Service Appears to be Stable Again

by Dennis Rahm

911 service has been restored to Chelan and Douglas Counties, as well as many other areas nationwide. A CenturyLink outage that began yesterday (Thursday) caused many customers to be unable to reach 911.

In an interview with LakeChelanNow, RiverCom Dispatch Center Supervisor, Jason Ayers, said the first notice of the emergency service being off-line occurred between 8:30 – 8:45 p.m. Thursday night. Service was back on for a brief period this morning with the establishment of stable service occurring at 11:30 a.m.

He indicated people could use 911 as appropriate, and said “If you have any questions call RiverCom911 at (509) 663-9911”. RiverCom services emergency communication in Chelan and Douglas Counties.

Technicians are making progress in restoring the service, but there may still be intermittent issues. While many areas of the country were affected, most of the service disruption was Westcoast based. The emergency services outage will now be investigated by the FCC’s public safety and homeland security bureau.

Authorities encourage people with emergencies to dial the alternate number if calls to 911 produces a busy signal until assured the system is operational again. They also urge people not to “test” the system by calling 911 unless they have a real emergency.