Several states in the United States of America reported an outage of 911 emergency services on Wednesday, April 17. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, services in South Dakota and portions of Nevada, Texas and Nebraska are down.
On Wednesday, South Dakota and Las Vegas officials said that 911 services had been restored but did not say what caused the crucial emergency infrastructure to fail.
Mysterious widespread outages exist nationwide, including in South Dakota and Nebraska, parts of Nevada, Texas, Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin and Kentucky. Officials report major disruptions in 911 services, preventing emergency calls from getting through. The cause of this outage remains unknown at this time, as officials are actively investigating. This situation is still developing, with more outages occurring.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning about the risks of cyber attacks on 911 services, which have migrated to digital, internet-protocol-based systems.
According to the report, several cyberattacks targeting 911 service systems have taken down the services in recent years. In 2017, 911 centers in more than 12 states were down in many US states.
Late Wednesday, the Las Vegas police said their 911 service had been restored, and everyone who called during the outage had been called back and assisted.