ROCKWALL, Texas — 911 call services were down in Rockwall, Hunt and Kaufman Counties and potentially parts of Collin County for at least four hours on Monday morning, officials said
A series of alerts sent out by Rockwall County's Office of Emergency Services at around 5:30 a.m. on Monday announced the outage.
The system failure affected nine 911 centers, including in Terrell and Forney, said North Central Texas 911 Director Christy Williams.
"In some instances a caller may have just gotten silence for up to one minute," she said. "Your average 911 caller is not going to hold for one minute."
In Terrell, neighbors couldn't get through to first responders to report a fire that had broken out in the attic of a home in the 900 block of East State St., the city said. They were able to find the non-emergency number and alert firefighters, who put out the flames and reported no injuries.
"The average caller is in a situation where they are emotionally involved and a minute could seem like a lifetime -- so that is absolutely not acceptable," Williams said.
She said an AT&T issue caused the problem and services were restored around 9:30 a.m. An AT&T spokesperson said it has repaired equipment and calls are now routing normally.
During the outage, residents were able to text message with 911 dispatches. Officials also shared alternate numbers for residents in certain areas to call if in need of emergency.
"I think that it’s important that the public know if you can’t get through on a phone line to always try to text to 911," Williams said. "Sometimes things happen with technology."
In 2018, a massive outage caused more than a million Texans to lose 911 services. CenturyLink agreed to pay $500,000 for that failure, which Williams said is unrelated to the issue affecting tens of thousands on Tuesday.
According to a 2022 U.S. Census Bureau study, Rockwall County is the fastest-growing county in the U.S. in terms of percentage growth. Its population increased by 6.5% between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021.