HAYS COUNTY
Emergency lines for Hays County were down starting at approximately 12:20 p.m. on Sunday, August 4, but backup systems allowed 911 calls to continue.
According to the Hays County Sheriff’s Office, the normal method for emergency communication calls were down for almost seven hours.
“This was a regional outage reported by AT&T and normal operations resumed at approximately 7 p.m. that day,” Alyssa Marley, public information officer of Hays County Sheriff’s Office, said.
When the outage impacts 911 calls, there is a backup system in place.
“When that happened our Telecommunicators forward 911 to what they call a PRI line through CAPCOG [the Capital Area Council of Governments],” Marley said. “This allows them to still receive 911 calls on their wireless headsets. Meaning Citizens were still able to dial in to 911.”
According to Spectrum, a Primary Rate Interface line, is a telephone line that uses the PRI standard in telecommunications. PRI is a standard that enables traditional phone lines to carry multiple lines of voice and data.
Marley offered suggestions for different methods to contact emergency services in the event of an outage. She said residents can try texting 911, connecting to a Wi-Fi source to try and dial 911 or locate a landline to call 911.
