FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — A massive cellular outage affected most Verizon Wireless customers Wednesday afternoon.
The service outage affected customers from Seattle to San Diego and east, Las Vegas, Denver and as far north as New York City.
Most Central California police and sheriff’s departments were affected in some way.
For the Clovis Police Department, this meant officers and dispatchers couldn’t call each other on their cell phones, but people could still call 911.
“Fortunately we still have a radio system with which we can still communicate,” says PIO Ty Wood of the Clovis police. “It takes a bit of getting used to because we’re so used to having our phones in our hand or pocket.”
In Madera and Mariposa counties, people who needed emergency service could only text 911.
The Fresno and Clovis Police Department’s non-emergency numbers could only be reached via landline calls, but officers say that hasn’t stopped them from doing their jobs.
“Many of us lived and worked in an era before cell phones,” Wood said. “The way our computer system went down, we have a backup system for that – we’re still operational.”
Monday night, Verizon says its engineers were able to identify and fix the problem, and cellular service has been restored in the affected areas.
Throughout the day, most online users reported being able to send text messages but not make calls.
Verizon says any customer still having issues should restart their phone.
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