911 outage impacts several Nebraska dispatch centers

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – Dispatchers in several counties across the state had to get creative to respond to calls for help Thursday night.

For nearly 12 hours, anyone who dialed 911 in Douglas and Sarpy Counties got a busy signal.

“I’ve been here 26 years and in my history here we’ve never had an outage of this magnitude or this length,” Allen said.

Dispatchers immediately sent out a public notice for anyone in an emergency to text 911 or call their non-emergency line.

However, Kathy Allen, the 911 director for Douglas County told 6 News one third-party app called Rapid SOS helped the most.

“That showed us people who had attempted to call 911 who weren’t able to get through from a wireless device,” Allen said. “So, we were able to call all those people back.”

In Sarpy County, dispatchers also relied on the life-saving app — but like everything, nothing is perfect.

Both counties are unsure exactly how many calls were missed, emergencies or otherwise.

“It was pretty chaotic for a while there,” said William Muldoon, Sarpy County’s director of communications. “We had to retask people that ordinarily would be at different tasks to go through different phone calls to make sure we’re not missing anything.”

Now, they’re working with the state hoping to find a way to make sure an outage like this never happens again.

Those details on how they’re preventing future outages are still in the works.

“That’s the whole reason for the [911] system there’s not supposed to be a point of failure,” Muldoon said.

Now, authorities recommend everyone have their county non-emergency number saved on their phone as a backup.

UNO and UNMC’s public safety departments as well as Lincoln Police were not impacted.

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