Law enforcement agencies across the country reported 911 outages Monday night, with many being restored in about an hour.
After 7 p.m. Eastern time, several law enforcement agencies across Minnesota, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Nevada said their 911 systems were not functional. Most of the agencies released updates saying the system was restored by about 8:15 p.m. EDT.
It was not immediately clear if the outages were related to a Microsoft system issue also reported Monday, NBC New York noted. Microsoft’s status page for its cloud services said “Any user may experience access problems for Microsoft 365 services.”
A Microsoft spokesperson told The Hill in a statement Tuesday, “We’ve seen no indication that the multi-state 911 outage was a result of yesterday’s Azure service interruption.”
On Monday, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Emergency Communications Board tweeted it was in contact with CenturyLink, a telecommunications company, to diagnose the cause of the multi-state outage. The post included a link to 24-hour, 10-digit nonemergency numbers for each county.
The board tweeted at 9:45 p.m. EDT that the state’s 911 service was restored, adding CenturyLink will determine the outage timeline and how many calls were affected.
The Minneapolis Police Department also posted the 911 systems were “not operational nationwide” before tweeting an update almost two hours later.
Delaware State Police had announced issues with 911 service statewide, saying those who called would be met with a busy signal. An update from the agency indicated the outage had ended.
Other police agencies, including in Tucson, Ariz., Washoe County, Nev., and Delaware County, Pa., all reported 911 outages before updating an hour or two later that the system was functioning again.
Updated: Sept. 29 at 2:06 p.m.