For some reason that no one has been able to figure out yet, on Thursday night, all 911 calls that AT&T Wireless customers in the Salt Lake City, Utah made area ended up routed to dispatchers in Seattle.

Police were made aware of the problem around 7 p.m. and asked Seattle dispatchers to transfer all calls back to Salt Lake City. But Salt Lake police detective Dennis McGowan said the issue “did not impact us at all.”

“We didn’t have any 911 calls from the AT&T cell phones that we’re aware of,” he said. “We became aware of the problem, we called AT&T and confirmed that it was occurring, but it did not impact our operations whatsoever.”

We’re glad that the mixup didn’t hurt anyone or affect emergency services all that much, but it’s a frightening prospect that all emergency calls could just shift to another city and no one knows how or why.

AT&T 911 call glitch corrected; reason still a mystery [Deseret News]
(Thanks, Brian!)

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