Cellcom users in Door County were unable to call 911 to report a camper fire

A camper owner and a local Door County fire chief were repeatedly unable to contact emergency services by calling 911 through their Cellcom service provider during efforts to extinguish a camper fire May 27.
Cellcom says 911 service should have been working as it continues to recover from a cyberattack that shut down most of its phone services since May 14.
Southern Door Fire Department Chief Rich Olson said he received a call at about 12:20 a.m. May 27 from the owner of a property on County J in the town of Clay Banks, who knew Olson's personal cellphone number, about the camper fire.
"(The property owner) told me (the camper owner) attempted to call 911 four times but could not get through," Olson said.
After being told of the fire, Olson then tried calling 911 himself through his phone but also couldn't make contact. He said he then used the department's nonemergency paging system to dispatch responders to the scene of the fire.
The camper owner's and Olson's phones use Cellcom, whose customers have been the victims of outages since the night of May 14 following what is now being reported as a cyberattack. Cellcom customers generally have been able to call other Cellcom users but not users of other phone service carriers.
Cellcom and its parent company, Howard-based Nsight, issued a Facebook post May 19 that said 911 calls made through Cellcom were working, as well as SMS texts, internet service, other communication apps such as WhatsApp and calls to other Cellcom users.
Customers continued to have difficulty making calls to non-Cellcom phone lines, although a May 27 update on the company website said, "Services, including both inbound and outbound calling and text messaging, are performing well for most customers following recent restoration efforts." It also said problems may crop up intermittently as stabilization of the system continues, and those having problems should try rebooting their phones before contacting customer support.
In a statement issued following the camper fire, Cellcom didn't directly address the claims of being unable to call 911 but said it followed protocols from the federal government to maintain 911 access by rerouting those calls to other networks in case of an outage.
"We are sorry to hear about the recent camper fire incident," the statement said. "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."
Cellcom did not immediately respond to the Door County Advocate if the company was looking into the matter, or planning to do so.
The camper is a total loss, and it's not known what started the fire.
The owner, who asked not to be identified, said the camper, a new one he has owned for about a month and a half, was unoccupied and nothing was plugged in at the time. He said even if his first 911 call had connected, he thinks the camper would've been a total loss because it was engulfed by flames already.
The owner said responders arrived within minutes, and Olson said five Southern Door firetrucks and 14 firefighters were on hand to fight the blaze for about an hour, with an assist from the Brussels-Union-Gardner Fire Department.
Although the camper owner feels a successful 911 call wouldn't have saved the camper, both he and and Olson said they were disappointed the system failed them when they needed it.
"My understanding is, it should have worked," Olson said. "It's disappointing that the 911 system didn't work. I hope (the outage is) resolved pretty soon."
Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or cclough@gannett.com.
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FOR MORE DOOR COUNTY NEWS: Check out our website
This story was updated to add new information.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Cellcom users in Door County unable to call 911 to report a fire

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