Spokane County 911 system repaired

Spokane County’s 911 system is back in regular operation. Emergency communications operators had been taking calls out of the system’s backup center north of the city of Spokane since the 911 phone system crashed Monday evening. Technicians from CenturyLink, who operate the phone lines, fixed the problem Wednesday. Operators were restationed at the main Emergency Communications building, 1620 N. Rebecca Street, about 2:30 p.m., said Lorlee Mizell, director of Spokane County 911 Emergency Communications. The system failed as a result of a faulty data switch. A backup system failed as a result of a different technical problem, Mizell said. 911 and Crime Check lines failed about 6:40 p.m. Monday and were out of service until the backup center was activated about 40 minutes later. Mizell said it’s unclear what caused the data switch to fail. It remains unclear how many calls were missed as a result of the outage.