911 Outages Reported In Multiple Cities, Cause Not Yet Clear

KEY POINTS

Reports of 911 system outage came in after 7 pm ET Monday
At the same time, Microsoft 365 services reported outage
No tangible link has been found between the two

Law enforcement agencies from various cities in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Nevada, and Arizona reported failures in their 911 system after 7 pm ET on Monday. Reports came in from Delaware and Ohio as well.

The service had resumed in most of the places by 8.15 pm. However, the authorities were tweeting on their pages that in case of an emergency, people should call local department numbers instead of the emergency lines.

The NYPD’s own systems were running smoothly but it was aware of the outages.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Emergency Communications Board contacted telecommunications company CenturyLink to find the cause of this failure. The department tweeted that the services were back online and it was going to determine how many calls had been missed during the downtime.

ECN is in contact with CenturyLink to determine the cause of the multi-state 911 outage affecting MN. If you have an emergency and cannot get through to 911, call the 24-hour, 10 digit non-emergency number. Find them here: https://t.co/HjYd0l1A5g. Please do not test the system. pic.twitter.com/pbU4WSLQMb
— Minnesota ECN (@MnDPS_ECN) September 29, 2020

911 services are down in the City of Tucson. If you need to make an emergency call, dial 520-372-8011. We will let you know when 911 is back online. pic.twitter.com/aDfAIX3yDU
— Tucson Police Dept (@Tucson_Police) September 28, 2020

All 911 systems are down in Washoe County/ Reno / Sparks. Rerouting is unconfirmed at this time. If you need emergency assistance call (775) 785-9276 for unincorporated Washoe County response
— Washoe Sheriff (@WashoeSheriff) September 28, 2020

At the same time as this system collapse, Microsoft reported a huge outage of its 365 cloud services. It was not clear if the two events were related.

Services such as Outlook.com, Office.com, Power Platform, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams including Teams Live Event were affected. Users had faced issues with logging in and server connection. The company denied any malicious activity.