TAMPA BAY, Fla. — Counties across the Bay Area and central Florida experienced 911 outages due to a massive Frontier network outage Tuesday night and Wednesday.
Frontier says routine maintenance was being done by Century Link in Clewiston on Tuesday night when the overnight outage occurred. Frontier is currently investigating the outages that occurred overnight and Wednesday.
Frontier says that there is a complete outage of telephone service throughout Central Florida. This outage means that many county facilities are not able to make or receive calls.
As of 1 p.m. Wednesday, the following areas have reported their 911 systems are back in operation:
- Hillsborough County
- City of Bradenton
- City of Tampa
- City of North Port
- City of Sarasota
- St. Petersburg
- Manatee County
- Temple Terrace
- Pinellas County
Frontier sent out the following statement on Wednesday afternoon: “Frontier is experiencing issues with phone traffic in the Tampa area. The first issue took place during the night due to routine network maintenance being conducted by Century Link/Level 3 associated with a Florida DOT road project near Clewiston. The issue during the night impacted network links connected to E911 service in the area. The outage during the night lasted for a period of approximately 50 minutes. This morning at approximately 10:07 EST, some customers in the Tampa area are again experiencing an interruption in service due to issues it appears CenturyLink is experiencing related to a fiber cut. We are in touch directly with CenturyLink and are being told services are restored at this point.”
The first outages started just before 1:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Lawmakers focus on fixing outdated 911 emergency call system
Sarasota County issued a Code Red Alert just before 1 p.m. in response to the outage, the Code Red Alert has since been lifted and the outage has been resolved.
Pinellas County's non-emergency line was interrupted overnight, however, there was not an interruption with 911 calls in Pinellas County. No phone calls were adversely affected.
Pasco County is currently not experiencing any outages.
If 911 phone lines are not available, you can reach each department by its non-emergency phone line:
- Citrus County Sheriff's Office: 352-746-6555
- Hernando County Sheriff's Office: 352-754-6830
- Hillsborough County Fire Rescue: 813-247-8200
- Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office: 813-247-8200
- Manatee County Sheriff's Office: 941-747-3011 or 941-301-2270
- North Port Police Department: 941-429-7300
- Pasco County Sheriff’s Office: 727-847-8102
- Pinellas County Sheriff's Office: 727-582-6200
- Polk County Sheriff's Office: 863-298-6200
- St. Petersburg Police Department: 727-893-7780
- Tampa Police: 813-231-6130, Fire & emergency medical service calls: 813-232-6805
- Temple Terrace 911 Services: 813-506-6500
- Sarasota County Sheriff's Office: 941-316-1201
- 941-356-2732
- 941-356-2747
- 941-356-2778
- 941-356-2784
- 941-356-2786
- 941-356-2787
- 941-356-3008
- 941-650-0819
The outage is affecting Tampa International's 911 system as well. Passengers and guests should call 813-870-8760 in case of an emergency to reach police dispatchers.
