Emergency Alert In Nebraska

Well it's about 5:46 PM and it looks like this thing has spread over to adjacent counties.

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ALERT 1 - 911 Telephone Outage Emergency
THE NWS HAS ISSUED A 911 TELEPHONE OUTAGE EMERGENCY UNTIL 7:00PM CDT
Issued: Thursday, April 01, 2010 12:50 PM CDT
Expires: Thursday, April 01, 2010 7:00 PM CDT
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Bulletin - Eas Activation Requested
911 Telephone Outage Emergency
Butler County Emergency Management Agency
Relayed By National Weather Service Omaha/Valley NE
1250 PM CDT Thu Apr 1 2010

The Following Message Is Transmitted At The Request Of The Butler
County Emergency Management Agency.

The Following Message Is Transmitted At The Request Of The
Cass...Butler And Saunders Counties Emergency Management.

There Are Widespread Outages Currently Occurring With The 9 1 1
Systems Several Counties In Eastern Nebraska. Wind Stream
Communications Is Working On The Problem.

Emergency Management Coordinators In The Affected Counties Recommend
That If Anyone With An Emergency Who Is Dialing 9 1 1 And
Receiving A Recorded Message Should Contact Their Own Counties
Communications Center On It Regular Seven Digit Line...Or Use A
Cellular Phone And Dial 9 1 1.

Telephone Numbers For The County Communications Centers Are As Follows...

Cass County...402-297-6593...
Butler...254-460-6405...
Saunders County...402-443-8946...

I sure hope it's due to the weather.

I live in Lincoln and this is what happened. Windstream the landline provider here in Nebraska went down, all landlines on the Windstream connection are out of service, this includes 911 which is also on Windstream apparently.
Phones are currently working this evening.

reply to post by dgtempe


Whether you believe it or not 911 service in itself is nothing special but a regular n11 number... when you dial it all calls are handled by the phone company the same way a regular call would be however it terminates at the 911 emergency center... The "wind" cannot down 911 service because 911,611,411 is just a "reserved number" that's reserved to phone company like the (555 NXX) but instead of needing a NPA prefix it routes directly to the company when dialed.

And no its not T1's anymore those are nearly prehistorical compared to whats being used now all data/calls are transmitted in between TELCO's via huge fiber optic trunks...

These often get damaged by workers when they dig and can down certain amount of people however they get backboned onto backup systems almost instantly unless its a major routing trunk in that case it can down part of a province/state.

You cannot have an outage that ONLY affect 911 unless there's a routing problem or and upgrade and as per my knowledge of phone switches n11 has their own routing tables and are very rarely touched because they don't change much... they're is no new npa-nxx or anything to add like regular routing tables hence they require less complicated routing and are on TELCO's premium routes... As I said they are very rarely touched so errors are rare...

My guess is they are upgrading the system for better efficiency to transfer data between centers ambulance/cops.

(premium route: Better chance of terminating properly to the end number without errors but more expensive to the company so they use it only for "special" purpose or customers with problems to terminate to specific areas/countries)

Sources: I work for a major TELCO

edit: added info sources.

[edit on 1-4-2010 by _R4t_]