UPDATE: Ada County reports work was successfully completed at 1:26 a.m.
-Original story below-
A critical maintenance issue will take 911 telephone services in Ada and Canyon Counties offline Friday morning some time between 1-3 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time.
In a news release, Canyon County said it was notified of the maintenance need by service provider, Lumen Technologies.
“Beginning 08/09/2024 tentatively between 1AM – 3AM tonight, there is a critical maintenance that needs to be completed at the BOISE WEST switch. All EM & Business lines that reside at this CO will be completely down from 3-5 minutes. Reroutes will not be able to be completed, as the switch will be completely down during this time. This is URGENT maintenance that needs to be completed,” the utility wrote to the county.
The outage will impact telephone calls to 911 and the county's non-emergency dispatch line. Text-to-911 service will remain operational in Canyon County.
Late Thursday, Ada County Sheriffs Office spokeswoman Deputy Lauren Montague confirmed Ada County would also be impacted by the outage. She said Ada County officials were told the outage could last as long as 10 minutes.
Montague said the county is asking residents who need emergency services to prioritize using cell phones over landlines.
Ada County also established alternative emergency telephone lines which will work during the outage. If a 911 call does not connect between 1-3 a.m. August 9, residents may call any of the following numbers for emergency response:
208-703-7435
208-703-7861
208-703-9627
208-713-6985
208-488-8727
208-703-1022
The county said it would post an update on its social media once the maintenance was complete and 911 service returned to normal.
This story has been updated to include alternative emergency numbers from Ada County.
