Harrisburg, PA – The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) announced that the intermittent outages with the Next-Generation 911 (NG911) system across the Commonwealth have been resolved. Anyone experiencing an emergency in Pennsylvania is encouraged to call the standard three-digit 9-1-1 number.
From the moment we were notified of the outage, our staff continuously worked with our vendors and county 911 partners to restore full service to the system. The 911 system is the backbone of our emergency response system, and we will continue to ensure it is there when you need it.
—PEMA Director Randy Padfield
Since the intermittent outage was reported to PEMA around 2:00 PM Friday, PEMA and partner agencies quickly and methodically worked to identify and resolve the issue. PEMA engaged with NG911 contract provider Comtech Telecommunications Corp. and all 61 Pennsylvania Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs, commonly called 911 centers) via conference line for the duration of the intermittent outages to maintain real-time situational awareness and facilitate troubleshooting.
“Earlier Friday, parts of Pennsylvania experienced intermittent disruptions to 911 service. We take this matter extremely seriously. Once we isolated the issue, we immediately implemented updates, and continued to verify full system functionality,” said Jeff Robertson, Comtech's President of Terrestrial & Wireless Networks Business Segment. “We’ve remained in close coordination with PEMA and all impacted Public Safety Answering Points, providing real-time updates and support. A full root cause analysis is underway and will take several days to complete. Based on our preliminary investigation there is no indication that this is cyber related.”
At approximately 3:25 PM Friday, PEMA issued a statewide precautionary emergency message through the statewide Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) and Emergency Alert System (EAS) to notify the public about the intermittent outage and to tell people to contact their county 911 centers using non-emergency numbers.
At 6:00 PM Friday, PEMA Director Randy Padfield provided an update on the intermittent outages.
PEMA suggests as a part of your personal preparedness plan, save your county 911 center ten-digit non-emergency number on your cellphone or write it down in an easily accessible place if you have an emergency and for some reason cannot reach 911. You can find your county non-emergency number on readypa.info/psaps.
While the 911 system is now functioning normally, teams are still investigating the root cause of the issue. An independent, thorough review will be performed to determine what can be done to mitigate future outages.