Ferguson calls for maximum penalty after 2018 911 outage

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington’s Attorney General is calling for the maximum penalty against CenturyLink after a 911 outage three years ago kept more than 10,000 emergency calls from going through.

Samantha Hovey placed a few of those calls on Dec. 27, 2018 from her home in Mount Vernon.

Hovey and her husband came home to find an intruder scoping out a way to break in.

“Panic, severe panic, frustration, after the first or second call you’re like, what is going on?” she said.

Hovey’s story is included in new testimony filed with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

Ferguson alleges CenturyLink insisted on using outdated technology as it transferred 911 service to a new vendor.

“They simply did not have the correct technology in place to make sure these critical calls went through,” Ferguson said.

CenturyLink is now known as Lumen. A company spokesperson wrote that the 2018 outage was caused by an unexpected equipment issue and “impacted some calls that another Washington state 911 provider was responsible to complete. We are confident the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission will reject the allegations in the complaint and in the attorney general’s testimony when the commission is presented with all the relevant information.”

The 2018 outage followed a 911 outage in 2014 that Ferguson’s office blames on a CenturyLink coding error.

Washington’s new 911 vendor, Comtech, had a partial outage last week affecting seven counties, where some calls were re-routed to other dispatch centers.

In 2020, Comtech had a full outage for 30 minutes that state officials say was caused by a software patch.

Ferguson said CenturyLink got away with a “slap on the wrist” after the 2014 outage when it paid a $2.8 million fine.

Ferguson’s office had asked for the maximum fine of $11.5 million.

Ferguson said he will again request the maximum fine for the 2018 outage.

The Attorney General’s office says the maximum penalty is $2,500 per call, which could be nearly $27 million based on the current information about the number of attempted calls.

“I can tell you if one of my kids, God forbid, had a medical emergency in this house, and I called 911 and I got a busy signal and that call did not go through, for God sakes, right? So what I tell my team to do is channel that emotion,” Ferguson said.

The Utilities and Transportation Commission will consider penalties against CenturyLink next year.

The 911 system is now more sophisticated to allow features like text-to-911.

An official at the state’s military department said there are backups, which is why some calls still went through during last week’s incident.

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