911 outage in Minnesota resolved, cause under investigation

(KMSP) - The 911 outage in Minnesota has been resolved according to the Minnesota Emergency Communication Networks. 

Law enforcement agencies first started tweeting about outages around 4:30 p.m. About an hour later, MECN announced the outage was fixed.

According to Bruce Gordon, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, a widespread outage is unprecedented. He says CenturyLink is the phone system provider for the entire state.

“There’ve been isolated instances where a 911 system goes down in a particular part of the state but this is very unusual to have a widespread outage throughout Minnesota,” said Gordon.

Gordon says at this point the outage does not appear to be caused by an external issue, like hacking, but the cause is still under investigation.

“Some calls were getting through, some were not, certainly the right thing to do for law enforcement and state to say if you’re having trouble getting through here are the alternative numbers,” said Gordon.

The 911 outage impacted Minnesota statewide as well as the Fargo, North Dakota area, according to law enforcement officials.

A spokesperson for CenturyLink released the following statement: "On August 1, there was a 911 issue in your area. At this time services are restored. Our technical team is investigating the root cause of the service disruption."

For a complete list of non-emergency numbers, click here.