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CORRECTION: CTX Council of Governments Executive Director says 911 system in Milam County was never down

Posted at 9:20 AM, Jan 20, 2017
and last updated 2018-07-24 21:30:38-04

The executive director of the office that oversees the 911 system in several counties in Central Texas said the 911 system in Milam County was never down as previously reported.

Central Texas Council of Governments Executive Director Jim Reed said around 2:30 a.m. 911 dispatchers in Milam County were having issues with data feeds on their computers.

When someone dials 911, the dispatcher will usually see a location and the name of the person calling, if available, o the computer screen. That allows that person to know which agency is the closest to send for assistance. However, that information was not showing up when a dispatcher received a 911 call early Friday morning.

 “When the first 911 call came in… with no data attached, the 911 dispatcher knew immediately something is wrong with the data. It could be a computer issue or it could have been a line cut,” Reed said.

The dispatcher notified officials who made the decision to temporarily reroute the calls to another phone line at the 911 centers, which Reed refers to as an admin line. On Friday morning, Reed said as crews troubleshot the problems, they also rerouted the calls for other 911 centers located in Mills, San Saba, Lampasas, Coryell and Hamilton counties as a precaution. As of 12:05 p.m. all the 911 centers in those counties were operating as normal.

“Even if all the call centers went down in our region, we have reciprocal agreements with adjacent call centers,” Reed said.

He said the only difference those dialing 911 in the six counties mentioned would have been answering more questions than normal.

On Friday morning, News Channel 25 reported the 911 system in Milam county was not working.

This after Cameron Police Chief Randy Dixon sent an email stating the system "had crashed and become inoperative" between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Friday and that residents should call the police department in the case of an emergency.

He mentioned in a statement it was an apparent issue with Verizon's phone system.

A Verizon spokeswoman sent News Channel 25 a statement regarding this issue:

"Milam County residents should not be experiencing issues making calls to 911. County officials were notified earlier today of an issue with the system that receives 911 calls. To prevent an interruption in service, calls were immediately rerouted to an alternative system. To Verizon’s knowledge, at no time was the ability to make or receive 911 calls compromised," said Verizon in a statement.      

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