UPDATE: 9-1-1 system down in Washington state - 10:15pm Thursday

The 9-1-1 system went down in Washington state on Thursday evening, December 27, 2018.

Shoreline advised citizens needing help to call the 24 hour non-emergency number 206-296-3311 or use cell phones to text to 911 for a true emergency.

Lake Forest Park Police call 425-486-1254 during the 911 outage.

Northshore Fire and Shoreline Fire have information from NORCOM (North East King County Regional Public Safety Communication Agency):

text 911 or call the 10 digit emergency line at 425-577-5656.

Seattle residents (south of 145th) call 206-583-2111. Seattle can also call 206-625-5011.

The State Patrol suggests that King county residents call 425-401-7788 to report emergencies.

WSP says that CenturyLink is experiencing problems that have affected large areas of the nation's 911 system, particularly on the west coast.

If CenturyLink is your phone or internet provider, your service may be down, too.

Ed. note: We received an alert on our cell phones at 11:30pm. Apparently everyone else did too.

UPDATE Friday morning: The outage continues Friday morning. Century Link apologizes and says that they ran into some other issues while they were restoring service. South King county has 911 service restored, but it is unreliable.

UPDATE Friday evening: Progress is being made to restore 9-1-1 service in King County. Most calls are again getting through. However, do not "test" the system - only call 9-1-1 in an emergency.