DOOR COUNTY (NBC 26) — The owner of the burned trailer says he tried to reach 911 using Cellcom, but his calls were dropped. Cellcom states that they follow federal rules designed to ensure emergency calls are still completed during outages.
- Southern Door Fire Chief Rich Olson expresses his concern about 911 accessibility
- Cellcom response regarding the fire Tuesday morning in Clay Banks
- The travel trailer fire is still under investigation by the Southern Door Fire Department
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
Cellcom says its services are now performing well for most customers as it works to fully restore an outage that has disrupted calling and texting across the area for nearly two weeks.
WATCH BELOW TO LEARN HOW A CELLCOM OUTAGE DISRUPTED 911 CALLS DURING A CLAY BANKS TRAILER FIRE:
Tuesday morning around 12:30, the owner of a travel trailer in Clay Banks woke up to find his trailer on fire. He says he made four calls to 911using his Cellcom service, but none went through.
He was able to reach Southern Door Fire Chief Rich Olson, who was asleep at home. Olson, who also uses Cellcom, says he tried to place a 911 call that failed.
"It's the first instance where we had an unsuccessful 911 call" Southern Door Fire Chief Rich Olson said.
Olson says on another phone, he reached dispatch through a non-emergency number.
"After we got back to the station last night, we all kinda talked about how bad this could be if this was a different situation and a medical emergency. It's a concern to the entire community," Olson said.
NBC26 reached out to Cellcom for an explanation. They expressed sympathy about the fire and said federal rules require rerouting 911 calls through other providers during outages. Their full statement is below:
"We are sorry to hear about the recent camper fire incident in Algoma. There are longstanding, industry-wide federal protocols in place to protect access to 911 during any carrier-specific outage. These protocols ensure that emergency calls are rerouted through other available networks during any carrier outage. We followed those protocols in full and our systems remained in compliance since the outage began."
Last year, the FCC adopted an order requiring all wireless carriers to implement location-based routing for calls and texts to 911 centers.
NBC26 spoke to Door County Dispatch about recent technical issues. They said their dispatch systems were working fine at the time of the fire but could not comment on cellular providers or their connectivity.
Southern Door says they’re still investigating the cause of the trailer fire, and the owner is awaiting word from insurance regarding the loss.
