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Waukegan 911 center lost connectivity in March county-wide outage; city seeks independent 911 phone system
Summary
A March county-wide upgrade disrupted Waukegan's 911 phone and CAD connection for nearly two hours; city dispatchers routed calls to a backup center and plan to implement a new phone system with built-in redundancies independent of Lake County systems.
Waukegan’s 911 communications center lost its connection to the county 911 phone system and computer-aided dispatch on March 11, leaving the local dispatch center offline for nearly two hours while the county and city worked to restore service, city officials told the council on March 17.
What happened: According to the city’s dispatch director, the outage was a county-side systems issue related to an upgrade. While other Lake County agencies experienced only brief interruptions, the Waukegan center remained down for almost two hours. Telecommunicators routed incoming 911 calls to the city’s backup center in Gurnee during the outage and engaged AT&T’s resolution center. City staff said they do not know why Waukegan’s connection lacked the same automatic failover protections as other centers and that the configuration predated the current IT leadership.
Why it matters: The Waukegan 911 center is the city’s primary emergency-call intake and dispatch hub. During the outage, the director said the center handled calls by routing to the backup and that staff do not believe any life-safety 911 calls went unanswered, though some non-emergency lines were unavailable. Staff recommended residents call 911 for emergencies even if nonemergency numbers appear disconnected.
City response and next steps: City IT and the dispatch director have engaged Lake County to obtain stronger backup arrangements and partially restore failover protection. The city reported identifying a potential interim solution but said it does not fully solve the phone failover problem. The director also said the city is moving forward with plans for a new 911 phone system for the future 911 center that will be architected without a dependency on Lake County systems and will include redundant backups and multiple connections.
What officials said: Director Gardella and dispatch staff said they are pursuing at least partial redundancy with the county and are prioritizing a new phone system design that will provide multiple failover options. The dispatch director emphasized that any calls to 911 should still be placed in an emergency because national routing protocols ensure unanswered 911 calls will roll to a center configured as Waukegan’s current backup.
Provenance: The dispatch incident and staff response were reported during the March 17 council meeting and the dispatch director’s prepared remarks on the March 11 outage.
