Officials: 911 Calls Experiencing 'Problem' Across Iowa

Emergency calls to 911 across Iowa are being affected by an outage, according to a press release sent out by Cedar Rapids Police Friday night.

The release says the outage is affecting all agencies across Iowa and that 911 calls from around the state are ringing into the Iowa State Patrol headquarters in Des Moines.

From KWWL: "Dispatchers with Black Hawk County said the issue wasn't an outage but that there was a 'problem' with statewide 911 calls.

A dispatcher with the Iowa State Patrol in the Des Moines area said they believed the problem to be limited to cellular 911 calls, but didn't know the extent of the problem."

When Patch editor Deb Belt in the Des Moines area checked with Westcom dispatch in West Des Moines, supervisors there said that center -- which serves West Des Moines, Clive and Urbandale -- was operating normally.

KCRG has created this list of alternate phone numbers people should use if they can't get through when calling 911:
Allamakee Co.: 563-568-4603 
Benton: 319-472-2337
Black Hawk: 319-291-2680 
Bremer: 319-352-5400
Buchanan: 319-334-2567
Butler: 319-267-2410
Cedar: 563-886-2000 
Chickasaw: 641-394-2406 
Clayton: 563-245-2885
Clinton: 563-242-9211
Davis: 641-664-2700 
Delaware: 563-927-3355 
Dubuque: 563-583-1711
Fayette: 563-422-6128
Floyd: 641-257-6144
Franklin: 641-456-2529
Grundy: 319-824-6933
Hardin: 641-648-6464
Henry: 319-385-2712 
Howard: 563-547-1165 
Iowa: 319-642-7307 
Jackson: 563-652-2468
Jefferson: 641-472-4146
Johnson: 319-356-6800
Jones: 319-462-4371
Keokuk: 641-622-2727 
Linn: 319-398-3911
Louisa: 319-523-4371
Mahaska: 641-673-0347 
Marshall: 641-754-4750
Muscatine: 563-263-9922 
Poweshiek: 641-623-5679
Scott: 563-484-3036 
Tama: 641-484-6261 
Wapello: 641-684-4233 
Washington: 319-653-2107 
Winneshiek: 563-382-3667