LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Millions of Americans went to check their phones soon after waking up on Thursday morning, only to learn they had no wireless service.
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile were among the providers whose customers reported having no service shortly after 4 in the morning.
The interruption was undoubtedly an inconvenience, but it raised an interesting question about what to do or how to place a call in the event of an emergency. Several of Kentucky’s 911 dispatch centers reported an inability to receive those calls due to the outage.
“We're monitoring our Facebook page, so that would be the easiest way to contact Bluegrass 911 at this time if they don't have phone service,” said Russ Clark, the director of Bluegrass Central 911 in Lincoln County.
Clark put a set of eyeballs on that page for hours on Thursday, encouraging those in his area to leave messages there as needed.
It was business as usual in Lexington’s E 911 call center, and their operations manager, Mario Cheek, didn’t see an increase in calls from a typical Thursday morning. Mr. Cheek touched on the many ways of contacting 911 should this happen again.
“You can always text 911,” he said. “Or you can enable the Wi-Fi feature on your phone,” he added before noting a technology that still exists but has become mostly obsolete in so many homes.
“Not a bad idea to have a landline available,” he said, “or know someone around you, maybe a neighbor, who has a landline,” he continued.
Some calls to the Lexington center focused on this wireless outage, and dispatchers explained the issue and shared whatever information they might’ve had.
By lunchtime on the east coast, most seemed to have had their wireless service restored.
AT&T issued the following statement to Scripps News while the outage was still in its early stages.
“We are working urgently to restore service to them (our customers). We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
