Indiana officials investigating cause of 911 outage

The cause of an outage that knocked down 911 access for several Indiana counties is still unclear.

911 access was knocked out for several Indiana counties Tuesday evening, including Johnson County. Other counties affected include Hancock, Hamilton, Lawrence, Madison and Shelby.

First reports of outages came in before 6 p.m. Tuesday, with Johnson County 911 confirming in a Facebook post later that evening that they were affected as well. Although Johnson County was affected by the service outage, 911 dispatchers were operating on its backup systems and were still able to take 911 calls and messages. Non-emergency calls were also still able to be taken.

Normal service was restored statewide by 8 p.m. Tuesday, Indiana State Treasurer Daniel Elliot said in a Wednesday news release. Elliot’s office oversees the Indiana Statewide 911 board, which has jurisdiction over 911 services statewide.

Elliot has been working with his staff and partners to determine what caused the temporary multi-county outage, according to the news release.

“We are still working to determine the cause of the problem and we will share information more when it is appropriate,” he said in the news release.

Tuesday’s outage demonstrated the “resiliency” of Indiana’s 911 systems, Elliot said. Affected counties went to backup systems and were able to receive emergency calls despite the disruption. The 911 board said backup and text to 911 systems “worked as intended.”

“I have asked my team to find out what happened so that we can prevent future outages of that nature from occurring again,” Elliot said. “I remain fully confident in our statewide 911 systems.”

There have been no reports of systems outages or disruptions since the resumption of normal services, according to the news release.