Palm Desert Sheriff's Station Handles 911 Outage

Several cities in the Coachella Valley reported a 911 phone system outage today, but all calls were routed to the Palm Desert Sheriff's Station, a sheriff's official said.

"No calls were lost,'' Riverside County Sheriff's Corp. Courtney Donowho said.

She said the sheriff's department's system did not go down.

"We have received calls from other agency's jurisdictions,'' Donowho said. "The ones we have received we have been rerouting to the appropriate agency."

The outage was reported at 9 a.m. when a Verizon fiber optic line in a power line was hit by a backhoe during construction, according to MyDesert.com.

The Palm Springs Police Department's service went back on shortly after 1 p.m., according to the website. Indio and Cathedral City were also impacted.

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