Updated on Oct. 1
On Monday, Sept. 28, at 4:45 p.m., the Cottonwood Police Department sent out a memo announcing that the 911 connection for the area was down, as well as the 911 connection throughout Yavapai County and Flagstaff.
“If you need to contact Cottonwood Public Safety Communications Center please call (928) 649-1397,” CPD wrote. “This includes the need for fire and medical for the following communities: Camp Verde, Lake Montezuma, Rimrock, Cornville, Sedona, VOC, Clarkdale and Jerome.”
The CPSCC said it did not know why 911 was down or when it would be back up, but a follow-up email sent at 5:29 p.m. announced that 911 had been restored for the area and the cause was being investigated by Lumen Technologies, formerly CenturyLink.
Tucson and other Arizona areas also reported outages during the timeframe, and later it was announced there were also problems in Nevada, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Delaware.
While Lumen estimated the different dispatch centers nationwide averaged about 40 minutes of downtime, Yavapai County Sheriff’s Officer Dwight D’Evelyn said the Cottonwood center connection was only down for around 15 minutes, but the department waited to alert the public when it was back up in case it didn’t stay up.
D’Evelyn said he was under the impression that Lumen had tried to make an upgrade, and it accidentally shut down centers nationwide.
“It has happened on occasion [before] … but it is rare and we want to keep it that way,” D’Evelyn said. “We’re never going to panic but we work very hard to determine a timeline and hope no one used the system.”
On Wednesday, Sept. 29, Yavapai County launched its “Text to 9-1-1” program, giving residents the ability to text instead of call the emergency line if they need to.
D’Evelyn believes that if there were to be another outage, texting would still work.
