AT&T 911 call glitch corrected; reason still a mystery

SALT LAKE CITY — A still-to-be-explained glitch that routed 911 calls made by Salt Lake area AT&T customers to the Seattle Police Department was remedied late Thursday.

The error, which appeared to primarily affect phones in the downtown and University of Utah areas, was resolved as of 11:30 p.m., said AT&T spokeswoman Brooke Burgess. She said the incident was "not common," and officials at AT&T were still determining what caused it.

"Our first priority was to get service back up and so we're still investigating the cause," Burgess said.

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."

— Emiley Morgan