South Dakota’s 911 service outage was longest disruption in Sioux Falls’ history

SIOUX FALLS — A statewide outage of 911 service across South Dakota on Wednesday night was the longest ever experienced in the state’s largest city — but officials say it had no impact on first responders’ ability to do their jobs.

“An unplanned disruption of 911 — it's obviously never ideal,” Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken said in a Thursday morning, April 18 news conference. “I will say our preparations and our ability to adapt to what happened last night quickly ensured that our public safety services continued to be delivered throughout that outage.”

According to Mike Gramlick, assistant chief for Sioux Falls Fire Rescue, 911 services went offline throughout South Dakota at 7:59 p.m. The outage lasted roughly two-and-a-half hours before services were fully restored across the state.

The outage impacted incoming calls to 911, but state and city officials said texts to 911 remained functional in most, if not all, areas.

Many law enforcement agencies across the Mount Rushmore State immediately took to social media to notify residents of the outage, with most encouraging any emergency calls to be placed to their respective non-emergency lines.

Gramlick said Metro Communications, which handles 911 calls for the state’s largest city, as well as for Minnehaha County, handled 112 calls for service through its non-emergency line during the outage.

“For reference, typically during the same time period for the time and week, Metro Communications takes 114 calls,” he said.

While it was the longest and most significant outage ever experienced in Sioux Falls, Gramlick said that the dispatching of first responders throughout the state’s most populous city and county were not impacted.

“To our knowledge, we’ve never experienced an outage of this magnitude or duration,” Gramlick said. “Police, fire and EMS response to 911 calls was not impacted during last night’s outage. Delivery of these essential public safety services continued throughout the outage.”

According to Sioux Falls Emergency Manager Regan Smith, a wireless emergency alert was sent to phones throughout Sioux Falls at 9:02 p.m. — more than an hour after 911 services went down — to alert the public of the outage.

“It looks like a text, but it’s designed to get your attention with a unique sound and vibration, repeated twice,” Smith said.

He encouraged anyone who didn’t receive an alert on their phone to check their notification settings or contact their wireless provider.

TenHaken, who delivered his State of the City address shortly before Thursday morning’s news conference, said pre-established procedures and the leadership of city staff made his job easy during the outage.

“I didn't even have to weigh in a lot because our team was just like an orchestra. It was so fun to see those guys in action,” TenHaken said. “You guys couldn’t have run this any better. It was excellent for me to be able to sit at home and armchair quarterback this thing.”

Wednesday’s outage came just hours after media reports that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was concerned about cybercriminal exploitation of 911 call center operations.

While no cause of Wednesday’s statewide outage in South Dakota has been confirmed, the Mount Rushmore State wasn’t the only place that saw 911 service taken offline.

Law enforcement agencies in southern Nevada (including Las Vegas); Douglas County, Nebraska; and across Texas were impacted, leaving millions without a way to reach first responders.

While officials in Nebraska say Douglas County’s outage was caused by a cut fiber cable, NBC News reported that the Federal Communications Commission continues to investigate the outage.

As of midday Thursday, all outages reported Wednesday night have been resolved.

Gramlick said that when a cause is identified for Sioux Falls’ outage, a report will be publicly released.