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More than 32,000 people were evacuated during the Waldo Canyon Fire, many of whom said they never received an emergency notification call.

According to the El Paso County Emergency Notification Office, approximately 118,000 emergency calls were issued during the wildfire.

Of those, more than 20,000 were never delivered to residents.

"How the emergency notification system works is they are given directions in the dispatch centers by an official on the scene, to determine who will get the call and what the message will say," Ben Bills with the El Paso/Teller E911 office said.

From there Bills said the calls are sent out to everyone in the affected area that is registered to receive one, or is on file.

"When you answer the phone it is voice activated, and it will say 'This is an important message from your public safety agencies, press any key to hear it,'" Bills said.

The system also sends out a text message and an email.

So the question is: Why did more than 20,000 emergency calls fail during the wildfire?

Bills said some were simply "abandoned."

"That call is lost from the time it is sent from the server until it reaches the residents phone or business phone," he said.

Bills said on the afternoon of June 26, the day the wildfire moved into the Mountain Shadows area, phone traffic was at capacity as residents scrambled to call family and friends to let them know they were evacuating.

He said that high call volume may have interfered with some of the outgoing emergency notification calls.

"We are going to do an after-action report, and figure out where did they fault lie, and how are we going to correct this problem," Bills said.

He said the couple killed in the fire did not have a landline or cell phone registered to receive an emergency call.

Bills added the recent fire should be a reminder to all.

"If you ever notice you are in a dangerous situation, take appropriate action and go to safety whether you got a phone call or not," he said.

During the week of the Waldo Canyon Fire, more than 35,000 residents registered to receive emergency notification calls in El Paso and Teller Counties.