OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Nebraska's 911 director expects that the state Public Service Commission will launch two investigations into separate 911 outages.
The investigation is expected to officially begin when the commission votes at its next meeting on Sept. 12, Nebraska 911 Director Dave Sankey told 3 News Now on Tuesday.
The state expects that 911 will work even when some things go wrong, Sankey said. But different parts of the state's 911 system failed just two nights apart.
Members of the group of five echoed the decision in statements to 3 News Now.
Commissioner Tim Schram said: "The Commission takes 911 matters seriously and will be conducting a thorough investigation into both Lumen and Windstream."
Commissioner Eric Kamler said: "Both of the 911 Network outages caused by two separate incidents last week warrant a swift and thorough investigation by the Public Service Commission into the potential lack of redundancy and to prevent future 911 outages. I look forward to working with fellow Commissioners and staff to initiate that investigation in the coming days."
Most recently, 911 outages hit Adams, Gage, Otoe and Saunders Counties beginning at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Other southeast Nebraska counties were impacted in some ways, too, according to the Public Service Commission. Service was restored Sunday morning.
Update, Sept. 7: Saunders County was not impacted the 911 outage, the county's emergency manager told 3 News Now. The Public Service Commission, citing a report from Windstream, said in a Sunday press release that 911 service in Adams, Gage, Otoe and Saunders County was down.
Lincoln Fire and Rescue says water leaked onto electronics at a Windstream building in Lincoln, causing a small explosion and a fire. But the fire department said it was repairs of that damage that led to the 911 issues. Windstream is contracted to provide 911 services to some 911 centers, the Public Service Commission said. Windstream has not yet responded to a request for comment.
The outage two evenings prior seems to be unrelated. That outage began Thursday evening and lasted more than 10 hours, impacting the Omaha metro area and nearly 60% of the state's 911 centers.
The earlier disruption was caused by cut fiber lines in Omaha and Minnesota, according to Lumen, the company that oversees the lines and has a contract with the state. Presented with additional questions Tuesday, Lumen re-sent information from last week.
The FCC and Lumen reached a $3.8 million settlement in 2021 after a coding error led to a 911 outage in September 2020 that lasted more than an hour and impacted seven states.
Sankey says the commission "doesn't know for sure yet" that a second cut was involved in Thursday's outage. Either way, he says the system shouldn't fail.
"We expect them (companies providing 911 services) to have redundancy in their network," Sankey said. "We expect them to have redundant data centers in their network ... We expect there will be five nines of service, that the system will be up and running 99.999 percent of the time."
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