Last night around 11pm I was awakened by an alert on my phone telling me that 911 service was down, and giving me an alternat number to call. By morning, it was clear that it wasn't a local problem. A quick search showed that the problem was caused by CenturyLink, which tweeted, blaming it on a a network element that was impacting customer services and saying that they estimated it would be fixed in about four hours.

It was more like twelve here on Whidbey Island, and some parts of the country are still (as of 2pm) offline, according to Outage.Report. The FCC is investigating.

If you live in Washington, king5.com has a handy list of numbers to call, by county. (The news article also has auto-playing video - you may want to mute your speakers.)

Notes & links:

  : C-link back up here.  Here are the emergency numbers to use when 911 is down:
    if 911 down: call 360-679-9567 360-675-3418 360-320-5795 360-320-5735 (Whidbey Is.)
    @ FCC investigating major CenturyLink outage and 911 disruptions - The Verge
      FCC to investigate CenturyLink as [...] outage continues, 911 calls disrupted
      CenturyLink: Service outage that caused 911 failures not related to hacking |
      king5.com (auto-play with audio) has list of emergency #s by county
      CenturyLink Outage Map - Outage.Report