CenturyLink Outage: Oregonians Get Apology, FCC Probes Company

PORTLAND, OR – It was around 11:30 on Thursday night. Many Oregonians were asleep, falling asleep or getting ready for that to happen. Of course, that's when everyone's cell phone went off.

The alert made a sound many were not familiar with, not all that different than the emergency alert that sometimes interrupts your favorite television show (or something you just happen to be watching).

People reached for their cellphones.

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"Emergency Alert," it said in bold. "This is CRESA 911. 911 lines are down in our area. call 360-693-3111 for emergencies."

Many Oregonians had the same response.

"CRESA? Huh? What does this mean?"

Not all Oregonians know that CRESA stands for Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency. It's the agency that runs 911 for Clark County. Washington. There is no Clark County in Oregon.

• Twitter made it easy for people to vent.
• "Why was Washington County included>" asked Robb Robinson. "Woke up the whole house which is not cool."
• "I'm in Clackamas County and got this alert as well," wrote marjorie. "It's frightening to wake up to a message saying 911 services are down in my area and the nearest # to call is in WA."
• "The alert sent to my Multnomah County At$T phone was confusing; thought it mean 911 not working in "our area," wrote Getta Grip. "No link for more info or whatever. Fyi for future planning."

On Friday morning, Oregonians got a bit of an apology.

"We apologize for the inconvenience with multiple alerts," they said. "Our alert system mistakenly sent to multiple platforms. We have identified the issue to ensure future alerts will not be sent multiple times."

The agency later partially laid blame at the feet of provider CenturyLink, the Louisiana-based company that suffered outages across much of the country on Thursday.

The FCC is now investigating in an effort to determine exactly what happened.

CRESA said that 911 service was restored Friday morning.

Photo via CRESA.