The Washington state 911 emergency response system appeared to experience a brief outage Thursday afternoon.
The outage prompted some law enforcement authorities, including the Seattle Police Department, to provide alternate phone numbers for people who needed immediate assistance.
“911 Services appear to be down,” the department wrote. “We will let you know when 911 services return. This appears to be an issue outside of Seattle as well. Take a moment to find out if your city has a backup number.”
NYC JOINING PORTLAND, SEATTLE TO SUE TRUMP ADMIN OVER DEFUNDING FOR ‘ANARCHIST JURISDICTIONS’
Washington Emergency Management wrote on Twitter just before 4:30 p.m. local time that the agency was also getting widespread reports about the outage impacting their systems in both the western and eastern portions of the state. The agency said the 911 Coordination Office was investigating the case.
The agency, as well as local authorities in Seattle, Bellevue, Vancouver and Bellingham, all tweeted that service had been restored just before 5 p.m.
“Looks like we are all back to normal,” Seattle PD said. “You can go back to calling/texting 911 for all of your emergency needs. We will continue to investigate what led up to this outage.”
Shortly after, the department said police were responding to a shooting, which reportedly left at least one person wounded.
Washington State Patrol Trooper Ryan Burke, who wrote that he was also notified of the statewide outage, said residents could “resume normal 911 use.”
While the system was down, people who needed emergency help were asked to call non-emergency numbers in each county.
The state Emergency Management Division has a list of numbers on its website.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Authorities added that the case remained under investigation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
>>>details