News file photo McKenna Schafer works behind her 911 dispatch terminal in Alpena County.

ALPENA — Alpena County 911 was forced to direct its emergency phone calls to Roscommon County 911 after its system went down early Monday morning, just as a snowstorm was beginning.

According to 911 Director Kim Elkie, the 911 outage began at about 4:06 a.m. and local calls were sent forward to Roscommon County until about 9 a.m. At that time, the Alpena County 911 backup systems began operating. Eklie said the system returned to normal at about 10:45 a.m. and was still functioning correctly as of 1 p.m. on Monday.

Elkie said as of Monday afternoon, she has not received information as to why the system stopped working, but she expects to know more about the incident in the coming days. The 911 center non-emergency line was operational throughout the entire outage.

During the outage, many motorists woke up to a thin sheet of ice on roads and snowfall that was picking up in intensity. There were several crashes in Northeast Michigan due to the slippery roadways and poor visibility. The snowfall is expected to move out of the area, but there may be some bands of lake-effect snow in the region and strong winds are expected to continue into today.