We take 911 services for granted, thinking they will always be available if and when we should need them. And the good news is, thankfully, they are 99% of the time.

But, this year alone, South Dakota has experienced two separate 911 outages resulting from problems occurring outside the state of South Dakota.

911 outages present a variety of challenges for the roughly 400 operators dedicated to manning the 911 services statewide in South Dakota.

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Dakota News Now reports, the first 911 outage this year happened in April. 911 services in South Dakota and three other states were affected due to a fiber line being cut. Then in July, another 911 outage occurred, this time as a result of Hurricane Beryl.

Both instances left users confused and wondering how something like this could happen. Especially twice in just a few months apart.

South Dakota 911 Operator Dawn Niehoff, told Dakota News Now, “If the problem is not on our end, and it was something like that that interrupted the 911 services, we just have to sit and wait until it’s repaired. We rely on our training. And that’s about all we can do.”

How do out-of-state issues affect our services here in South Dakota?

According to Dakota News Now, South Dakota uses a service provider called Lumen, formally known as Century Link. When someone in East River calls 911, it goes to a router in Texas and then back to South Dakota. Conversely, when a resident in West River uses 911, that call gets routed to North Carolina, and then to a South Dakota center.

Hence the reason we see a downstream effect when things go sideways at times.

Luman has a 600-page contract with the state of South Dakota regarding its services. The contract states a goal of less than six minutes of downtime per year will be excused for situations beyond CenturyLink’s/Luman's control. The contract also details redundant components to avoid outages.

Luman told Dakota News Now, that when outages occur, their team of technicians works extremely hard to limit the duration of the outage.

What things can you do to ensure you'll be able to reach authorities during a possible 911 outage?

April Heinzee with the National Emergency Number Association, told Dakota News Now, that they advise people to program local emergency numbers into their phones.

Typically, during a 911 outage, ten-digit lines will still be working.

Residents should also follow the instructions that 911 centers put out via press releases during outage situations.

The majority of South Dakota residents should still be able to text 911 during an outage using the Next Generation 911 service in the state.

As Dakota News Now reports, in 2022 alone, over 322,000 calls were made to 911 here in South Dakota.

Source: Dakota News Now