BUTTE — UPDATE: 08-18-2026, 5:05 p.m. — Butte-Silver Bow Sheriff Ed Lester told MTN News that 911 is up and running. "I just called 911 with my Verizon cell phone," Lester said. "Our administrative lines are down, and I believe all county admin lines are down. In the event someone calls 911 and can’t get through, they should call again, and they may get a text back. This is an issue that is affecting other areas in Southwest Montana as well."
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Butte-Silver Bow County is experiencing outages on its business phone lines, though officials say the 911 system remains fully operational.
Watch a video about B-SB phone outages:
"We are aware that there is a phone issue affecting our business line. However, the 911 lines are separate, and they are fully functional," said Joshua Hettick, the IT manager for Butte-Silver Bow County.
Several residents said they had been trying to reach the county about a broken-down van attracting crime to the area near Emma Park and the high school, but couldn't get through on the business lines. One woman said she became so frustrated with the phone issues that she visited county offices in person.
Joshua Hettick, Butte-Silver Bow IT manager, said the county is working to resolve the issue.
"We have contacted our internal phone vendor, who has contacted our external phone vendor, and submitted a ticket on our behalf to help get this resolved."
The county has not provided a definite timeline for when the phone lines will be restored.
"Be patient working with us; we are following the ticket with the phone vendor very closely, and we will give updates as soon as we have them," said Hettick.
When I drove past the van, several county officials were inspecting the situation with the van and said the issue would be taken care of.
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