Kootenai County Network Outage Disrupts Services, Emergency Lines Remain Operational

A countywide network outage knocked out various Kootenai County government systems Monday evening, cutting residents' access to county services while officials worked through the night without disclosing when operations would return to normal.

The Kootenai County Office of Emergency Management confirmed the outage in a press release issued at 7:40 p.m. Monday. The disruption affected different systems and services across the county, though officials did not specify which departments or platforms were offline. As of 8:15 p.m. Monday, the cause remained unknown and no restoration timeline had been announced.

The critical reassurance from the Office of Emergency Management: 911 and emergency services remained fully operational throughout. Residents with urgent needs were directed to continue calling 911 as usual. For non-emergency matters requiring county assistance, the designated working line is 208-446-1854.

The county confirmed it was actively working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, but provided no estimate for when systems and services would come back online. No county spokesperson or IT official was publicly identified in the initial press release, and no interim workarounds were detailed for county departments relying on the affected network.

The scope of which government functions were disrupted, whether county websites and payment portals were inaccessible, and what contingency protocols were activated remained unanswered questions as of Monday night. The cause of the outage was listed as under investigation, with no utility or service provider publicly identified as the source of the failure.

Until full service is restored, residents needing non-emergency county assistance should call 208-446-1854, and anyone with an emergency should call 911.