Lewis & Clark County officials are moving to establish a second permanent home for the county Communications Center in response to a 911 outage in April 2024 that exposed vulnerabilities in local emergency communications. The backup facility is intended to preserve continuity of operations during disasters or other incidents that might render the primary center inaccessible.

The Communications Center handled more than 120,000 emergency and non‑emergency calls in 2024, underscoring the scale of services that must be sustained even in crisis conditions. In the wake of the outage, county emergency planners and center leadership began evaluating options to reduce the risk that a single event could interrupt 911 service for residents across the county.

Operations manager Zach Slattery said the team is scouting a site positioned far enough from the current center to avoid concurrent disruption. Staff will be rotated through the backup location on a regular basis to exercise systems, test equipment and verify connectivity, ensuring the alternate site is operational when it is needed. The center is also exploring grant opportunities to help fund the build‑out of the new facility.

Establishing a permanent backup location differs from temporary or ad hoc arrangements because it allows durable infrastructure, hardened networking and routine operational testing. Those elements are designed to reduce downtime for vital emergency communications that serve fire, law enforcement, medical dispatch and other first responders who rely on uninterrupted call‑handling and dispatch capabilities.

For local residents, the plan is intended to strengthen public safety by minimizing the risk that a single outage could delay response to emergencies. Regular staff rotation through the backup will help identify technical or procedural gaps before a real incident occurs, while a geographically separated site reduces the chance that a regional disaster would knock out both centers simultaneously.

Financing the project will be an important next step. Exploring grants suggests county leaders are seeking outside resources to limit the local budget impact, but a final funding plan and timeline for construction or retrofitting have not been announced. County officials will need to balance costs, site selection, and the technical requirements for secure, resilient communications.

The Communications Center’s initiative reflects a broader push toward resilience in critical infrastructure and aims to ensure that Lewis & Clark County’s emergency response capabilities remain robust and reliable in the face of future disruptions.