FARGO - All 911 emergency lines in Cass and Clay counties, including Fargo-Moorhead, were down for nearly an hour because of an unknown problem late Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 1.
Mary Phillippi, director of the Red River Regional Dispatch Center, announced at about 4:30 p.m. that the system's lines were not working and that CenturyLink, an Internet provider, had been notified of the problem.
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About an hour later, Phillippi said the system was working again. She said CenturyLink had not provided a cause for the problem.
"They were notified it was a widespread outage," she said. "Down in the (Twin Cities) metro area there were a number of dispatch centers that were out."
However, many 911 dispatch centers in counties surrounding Fargo-Moorhead did not experience the same issues.
A 911 outage in Grand Forks was noticed around 5 p.m. but only lasted several minutes.
Officials with the Minnesota counties of Otter Tail, Becker, Norman, Mahnomen and Wilkin confirmed their systems were operating normally during the Fargo-Moorhead outage. The North Dakota counties of Traill, Richland, Ransom, Griggs, Steele, Barnes and Sargent also said their systems were OK.
A CenturyLink spokesperson said a technical team is looking into the situation and will provide updates as more information becomes available.
