A camper fire in the town of Clay Banks on May 27 exposed serious flaws in emergency communication during Cellcom’s ongoing service outage, as both the camper’s owner and a local fire chief were unable to reach 911 during the blaze.

Southern Door Fire Department Chief Rich Olson said the camper’s owner tried calling 911 four times but couldn’t get through. Olson, who also uses Cellcom, attempted to call 911 after receiving a direct call from the property owner around 12:20 a.m., but he too failed to connect. Olson ultimately used a nonemergency paging system to dispatch firefighters.

“The property owner told me [the camper owner] attempted to call 911 four times but could not get through,” Olson said to the Green Bay Press Gazette.

The fire occurred while Cellcom continued to recover from a May 14 cyberattack that disrupted voice services across its network. Though the company said 911 service should have been operational and rerouted through backup systems, customers have reported persistent issues reaching non-Cellcom numbers, including emergency services.

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Cellcom and its parent company, Nsight, claimed in a May 19 statement that 911 calls were functioning and being rerouted properly under federal protocols. However, the events in Clay Banks suggest otherwise.

“We are sorry to hear about the recent camper fire incident,” Cellcom said in a statement. “There are longstanding, industry-wide federal protocols in place to protect access to 911 during any carrier-specific outage. These protocols ensure that emergency calls are rerouted through other available networks during any carrier outage. We followed those protocols in full and our systems remained in compliance since the outage began.”

Cellcom has not responded to questions from the Door County Advocate regarding whether it is investigating the 911 failure.

The camper was fully engulfed in flames by the time responders arrived and is considered a total loss. The owner, who asked not to be identified, said the camper was unoccupied and unplugged at the time of the fire. He believes the fire would have destroyed the camper regardless of whether the emergency call had gone through, but said the failure was still troubling.

“Even if my call had gone through, the camper would’ve been gone. But 911 should have worked,” he said.

Chief Olson agreed.

“My understanding is, it should have worked,” he said. “It’s disappointing that the 911 system didn’t work. I hope [the outage is] resolved pretty soon.”

Fire crews from Southern Door and the Brussels-Union-Gardner Fire Department responded with five trucks and 14 firefighters. The fire was extinguished within an hour. The cause of the fire remains unknown.

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