911 Center Loses Power For 20 Minutes

Portions of the Kootenai County 911 center were without power for about 20 minutes Wednesday.

Dispatchers were able to stay in contact with police and emergency workers by portable radio. However, for about 10 minutes callers trying to dial 911 would have gotten a busy signal, said Kent Hall, 911 director.

At about 2:45 p.m. the center lost power. The backup generator automatically went on. But apparently a circuit breaker group was tripped, cutting power from the telephones and radios, Hall said.

Power was restored at 3:05. Hall said it appears no one needed to call the 911 center during the outage.