Marin County 911 Service Restored After Potentially Flood-Related Outage

Marin County has restored 911 service after an hourslong outage Sunday night that might have been connected to recent flooding, officials said Monday morning.

County officials said that the outage was due to an AT&T service problem affecting the local 911 line, as well as other landlines and cellphones across Marin. Service was restored about 1:30 a.m., and calls were working as usual, the county said.

“We noticed what was potentially a catastrophic failure in the Marin County 911 system,” said Interim Fire Chief Mike Marcucci.

County officials noticed the service disruption around 8:30 p.m., after reports that some residents’ 911 calls dropped or received busy signals. Some people were able to get through to the operators.

The cause is still unknown and under investigation, though Marcucci said that officials believe flooding could have contributed to the network issues.

The outage coincided with historically high king tides and the latest in a series of winter rainstorms to hit the Bay Area in recent weeks. Over the weekend, up to 1.2 feet of water collected in low-lying areas of Marin County, flooding multiple roads and intersections.

According to Marcucci, the 911 issues began about an hour after first responders received reports of flooding at an AT&T substation in San Rafael. He said that county officials have also heard from Verizon, another network carrier it contracts with, that it might also have been experiencing interruptions.

AT&T and Verizon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Marcucci said that the county’s network of first responders resorted to using a backup radio system to contact each other and forward service requests while service was disrupted.

The county told residents that in case of an emergency, they should go to their nearest fire station if they were unable to get through to 911 operators via phone. According to Marcucci, one person in Larkspur did go to a fire station to seek help.

He said that no other major incidents have been reported during the outage.