911 outage has people fearing the worst

The US emergency services system was reportedly offline, stoking cyberattack fears and bolstering blackout rumors.

The US’s 911 emergency service line is experiencing issues after hundreds of people across the country reportedly couldn’t reach emergency services over the phone.

A majority of users said they’d experienced dropped calls, while others found the line busy or that they received no answer.

Downdetector, a platform that lets users report outages in real time, showed which areas were hit the hardest, with New York among the most affected states.

Reports peaked at around 5:21 a.m. on November 13th, 2026, when 298 people confirmed they were experiencing issues with the service.

Microsoft outage fuel speculation

Users took to Downdetector’s comment section and X to speculate about the cause of this outage.

Some people believe that the outage is connected to the planned emergency alert system test, scheduled for November 17th, 2026, and are seeing this as a sign of impending war or a total blackout.

“This might be the major blackout that everyone was talking about,” said one user on Downdetector.

The total blackout rumors follow the Pentagon's release of plans to operate independently for 90 days in the event of war or cyberattacks on power grids. People began to draw conclusions that something was going on behind the scenes.

Others put the outage down to the widespread Microsoft outage affecting businesses and organizations across the globe.

Microsoft outage shouldn’t affect 911 lines, authorities say

The Clay County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said its operations were affected by the outage and that, until the service is restored, people should expect delayed email responses.

However, the Sheriff’s Office said that its communications center wasn’t affected and that, in case of an emergency, civilians should dial 911.

This still leaves a lot of questions in the minds of users tracking the outage, leading many to believe that something else is at play here.

On the r/outages subreddit, one user who runs a small internet service provider claims they’d never seen this many reports that 911 was down, particularly spanning all areas across the country.

Even after 3 hours, the user reports that hundreds of people are still reporting problems, and the Microsoft outage times don’t correlate to the 911 outage reports.