911 line down for two hours

Jace Radke

Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2000 | 11:43 a.m.

For nearly two hours Tuesday night Las Vegas residents were without 911 emergency phone service after a power outage shut down the new Metro Police 911 center.

The outage occurred at about 6:45 p.m. when a rodent got into some transmission lines in the area of Arville and Russell roads shorting out power to about 800 residents and the Metrocomm building, 4591 W. Russell Road, Nevada Power spokeswoman Sonja Heden said.

The power was restored at about 7:30 p.m., but the 911 system remained down for another hour because of a rebooting problem, Metro Police spokesman Officer Tirso Dominguez said.

"It's like when you're at your computer and someone flicks the lights on and off and you have to reboot," Dominguez said. "There was some kind of glitch when we went to reboot."

The 911 system is powered by a set of batteries that are charged by Nevada Power, Dominguez said.

When the batteries wouldn't come back online, Metro switched over to a diesel engine to run the system at about 8:30 p.m.

"We will remain on the backup engine until a troubleshooter can get here and determine what went wrong," Dominguez said. "We're working on that now, and we hope to have someone here as soon as possible."

While the system was down, dialing 911 resulted in a busy signal for callers. The media put out an alternative number, 382-3000, for emergency services, and calls were also shifted to North Las Vegas, Dominguez said.

The new 911 system went online Aug. 8 in a new building with room to expand and meet the department's and community's needs. The new system and building cost $12 million.