WA man couldn’t reach 911 after icy rollover. State AG blames CenturyLink for outage

Victor Barajas was on his way to work early one morning when his vehicle hit ice on the highway and rolled three times.

The Pasco man was too afraid to try and get out, not knowing if he was seriously injured and the pain was being masked by shock.

His vehicle had no power because the battery had come loose. And the roof was completely smashed.

Barajas remembered placing his cellphone in a pocket before heading out the door that morning. But, when he dialed 911, he got nothing.

No ring tone. No busy signal

His unsuccessful attempts to summon help were among the 10,752 calls blocked from reaching a 911 dispatcher during a widespread outage.

A failure in CenturyLink’s fiber optic network caused the outage that affected Washington’s 911 system, disrupting emergency communications on and off.

It started early in the morning on Dec. 27, 2018, and lasted for more than 49 hours.

Technological failures

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson says CenturyLink was responsible for many of the technological failures that led to the outage, and failed to notify its 911 call centers of the outage as required by law.

The major telecommunications company, which is based in Louisiana, was under contract with the Washington Military Department’s Emergency Management Division to provide statewide 911 services to Washington.

It was in the process of transferring control of the system to Comtech. Yet, at the time of the outage, it still maintained control of 15 call centers, including those in some of the state’s most populated counties like King, Snohomish and Pierce.

CenturyLink faces $7.2 million in penalties for thousands of alleged violations of state law and Washington Utilities & Transportation Commission, or UTC, rules.

Ferguson is calling for a maximum penalty against the company.

On Thursday, his office’s Public Counsel Unit — representing customers of state-regulated utilities — presented testimony to the UTC.

Barajas’ testimony about his crash on Dec. 28, 2018, was one of four statements submitted by Washingtonians affected by the more than two-day outage.

Pasco rollover

When Barajas was unable to reach 911 following the 1:40 a.m. rollover on Interstate 182, he tried calling several friends but no one answered given the early hour. He left a voicemail for his father.

He then thought of his boss at work and called her. She was able to reach a dispatcher through the non-emergency phone line.

Barajas’ father, who heard the voicemail, showed up a half-hour later just as a Washington State Patrol trooper was arriving at the crash site.

Barajas by then was confident that he was not seriously injured and, with the help of his dad, got out of the smashed vehicle. He was treated at a Tri-Cities hospital and found to have only minor bruises.

“I feel very lucky I was uninjured, my phone was undamaged, and the car did not catch fire with me trapped inside,” Barajas wrote in his statement to the UTC. “Given the time of morning, with my contacts unlikely to answer their phones and worried I might be in shock, I felt a strong concern when I could not reach 911.”

“I am very disappointed to learn first-hand that no duplicate system existed that would take over if the regular 911 system failed,” he added.

Other testimony Thursday included an Olympia man who, during an extreme spike in blood pressure, had to be carried to his truck by his wife and daughter so they could drive him to a hospital. That came after his wife called 911 six times, only to hear three beeps each time before the line disconnected.

That man still experiences lasting health problems from the delay in emergency medical treatment, Ferguson’s office said in a news release.

Large 911 outage

“This is not the first time CenturyLink failed to provide reliable 911 services,” said Ferguson said.

“Imagine being in a car accident or having a medical emergency and not being able to reach 911. As a result of CenturyLink’s conduct, thousands of Washingtonians called 911 only to be met with a busy signal. CenturyLink must pay the maximum penalty for its violations of state law.”

It was the largest 911 outage to hit the state since 2014, when another CenturyLink outage stopped nearly 6,000 calls from reaching dispatchers over a six-hour period.

After that incident, Ferguson urged the state UTC to impose the maximum regulatory penalty of $11.5 million on CenturyLink. However, the commission ultimately approved a proposed settlement of $2.8 million for that outage.

Ferguson then called it inadequate and “a slap on the wrist” for CenturyLink.

In Thursday’s news release, Ferguson called CenturyLink “a serious repeat offender” for severe network failures.

Documents provided by the Attorney General’s Office say CenturyLink insisted on using outdated signaling system technology and “designed an unnecessarily complex interconnection between itself and Comtech.”

CenturyLink reported to the UTC a 2019 total Washington operating revenue of $245 million, according to the documents.

It is no longer responsible for the state’s 911 call processing. However, another outage remains possible because the company’s underlying network supports emergency services in Washington, the documents state.

CenturyLink’s response to Thursday’s testimony from the Attorney General’s Public Counsel Unit and the four affected Washingtonians is due by March 30.

The state commission then will review the evidence at hearings in August 2022 before deciding on penalties against the company.

This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 1:54 PM with the headline "WA man couldn’t reach 911 after icy rollover. State AG blames CenturyLink for outage."