After 23 hours, 911 lines back up in Fremont and Custer Counties
FREMONT COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) -- Two Southern Colorado counties went without local 911 services for 23 hours beginning on Wednesday.
According to Fremont County Emergency Management, 911 lines went down at the CRCA/FRECOM Combined Regional Communications center at 4:50 p.m. Wednesday. The center provides dispatch services for that area, and both Fremont and Custer counties were affected by the outage. The center is located in Cañon City.
Bill Duggan, Executive Director for Combined Regional Communications Authority, says calls will be routed to the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office. From there, Pueblo dispatchers will then transfer the calls back to Fremont County dispatchers.
"I like to think of us as the hub of public safety," Duggan said. "Within I think three minutes we had that enacted last night. We had no reports of any missed 911 calls. All calls are being answered. In fact, I have a dispatcher over there right now helping answer calls."
Just after 5 a.m., officials said there was "no timeline given for repairs to be completed."
Duggan told KRDO the outages were caused by two problems. One was a circuit problem with a service provider between Fremont County and Denver. As of Thursday afternoon, Duggan said those issues had been fixed.
"Then restarting all the equipment since that occurred, we found some on site equipment that is not responding appropriately that they are working on now," Duggan said.
Roughly an hour later at 3:45 p.m., Duggan confirmed with KRDO that the 911 lines were back up. By that point, the 911 lines in Fremont and Custer Counties had been down for 23 hours.
Duggan says the Fremont County dispatch center receives about 200 emergency calls per day. Their partnership with the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office is vital to protecting public safety when an unexpected outage occurs.
"We have direct radio communication with them, so there is no delay in having to make a secondary phone call or anything. We can get the information here directly to get out to our emergency responders," Duggan said.
In two plus years, Duggan says this is the first phone outage he has experienced. However, his team stays prepared for anything unexpected that may come their way.
"It is a disruption of our normal routine, but they have done a phenomenal job and we continue to serve our citizens just as we would any other day," Duggan said.
