Issue with 911 calls resolved in Flagler County: What to do if can't reach 911

FLAGLER COUNTY - The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office says an AT&T customer had an issue Thursday morning as she tried to call for help in a medical emergency.

Dispatch could hear her, but she couldn’t hear them. During a recording of the first 911 call, she and the dispatcher overlap. 

"Hello?" "This is Flagler County 911." "Hello?" "Can you hear me?" 

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office Director for Communications, Christina Mortimer, says the woman hung up and called again from another AT&T phone.

"She was still not able to hear us," Mortimer said. "She started to panic."

Dispatch did get the caller’s address, so they sent out a police officer and an ambulance. They checked the call history of the address and could see medical calls had come in from that house before.

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"Thankfully, we do have all that, the resources to be able to see where someone is calling from. But it definitely puts a little bit more pressure on, not knowing what we're sending our crews into," said Mortimer. "That's the scary part."

So what happened?

AT&T told FOX 35 News in a statement, "The service provider that handles call routing in Flagler County experienced an issue that briefly disrupted audio for our wireless customers. The provider has resolved the issue, and calls are now being handled normally."

The representative explained that this only impacted calls to 911 because the issue was specifically with something called "trunks," which is the network access technology used for the public safety support system. 

Of course, AT&T isn’t the only phone company to ever have problems. Verizon just had an outage in the Tampa area earlier this week.

A Verizon representative told FOX 35 News that mobile providers have an agreement, so if someone calls 911, but their network is down, the phone will go roaming to another carrier, so the call can still transfer. The problem on Tuesday morning was that the call did not connect, so the phone didn’t roam.

"We’ve heard of issues in the past that it may happen, "said Mortimer. "But we haven't ever had this happen, to my knowledge, any time here."

If you have trouble reaching 911, try calling the non-emergency line. Depending on where you are, you might also be able to te  xt 911. 

Flagler County and several other Central Florida emergency communications centers have started using a new platform called Prepared Live.

With Prepared Live, Mortimer says, "We can do video, we can do live stream. And we can also do location requests all through that software."

Setting up a medical ID on your phone is also a good idea. FOX 35 walks you through how to do that here.

If you’re interested in directly getting involved in the dispatch center, Flagler County’s Emergency Operations Center is hiring.