Tuesday, Rash sent out a massive alert to the community and media saying the 911 center was failing to receive numerous emergency calls from Verizon and CenturyLink customers. Similar problems also affected emergency services in Gallatin County. By 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Rash said Verizon alerted Yellowstone County that the issue was fixed. However Rash said he waited roughly six hours, still directing callers to their non-emergency dispatch line to ensure the issue was indeed fixed. By about noon on Wednesday Rash called the issue "fixed." Verizon Wireless spokesperson Steve Van Dinter said the outage was caused by a hardware malfunction within a third-party fiber provider. But Van Dinter would not confirm the third-party provider Verizon contracts with. Van Dinter said once the company was notified of the problem, it was fixed within five minutes. However, he said Yellowstone County didn't make notification until about 8 p.m. Tuesday.