Enhanced 911 phone service has been restored from the Century Link 911 outage that occurred overnight. However, officials said sporadic call routing difficulties may still occur.

Individuals that continue to experience difficulty in reaching 911 should dial their local 10 digit number for police and fire/emergency medical services. These numbers are found in the front of local phone directories.

The State E911 office will be conducting an after-action review of this outage to determine its source and to identify ways to mitigate future outages, officials said.

Background on E911 in Washington State:

The Washington State Enhanced 9-1-1 (E911) Program is the result of a 1991 voter referendum directing enhanced 911 emergency communications systems to be available statewide by Dec. 31, 1998.

The referendum provided for a state E911 coordination office. This office would facilitate local planning and installation of such systems.

Funding provisions were included in the referendum for county and state excise taxes to support implementation of E911 plans and systems.

The state used state 911 excise taxes to help fund those counties that could not implement E911 with excise taxes collected by their own county.

The State E911 Office of the Military Department’s Emergency Management Division works with counties and communications’ companies to ensure the E911 system is operational and available to all in the State of Washington.