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Grand County 911 steps in when Summit goes down

Sky-Hi News staff report

UPDATE: Some customers in western Colorado and surrounding areas recently experienced a service disruption due to a third-party fiber cut. All services have been restored.

A broken fiber optic line between Breckenridge and Bailey has caused a widespread telephone service outage that’s taken Summit County’s 911 Center offline.

At 6 p.m. Monday, Grand County EMS and Office of Emergency Management Chief Ray Jennings said calls that would normally go to the Summit County 911 Center were being forwarded to Grand County so they won’t go unanswered.



He explained the counties have backup systems so when one of their 911 centers goes down, others can step in to handle the calls.

Jennings added that the 911 Center in Routt County has also been experiencing some problem due to the outage and has not been receiving some calls from landlines in the area. As a result, officials from Routt County are asking that emergency calls be made on mobile phones or by texting 911, if possible.



On Twitter, CenteryLink acknowledged the outage that’s affecting “some customers in many areas of western Colorado,” and the company said its technical team is investigating the problem. As of 6:30 p.m. Monday, there was no timetable to fix the problem.

It was not immediately clear if any Grand County landlines were affected by the outage, but phones at Sky-HI News have been down since early afternoon.


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