Pennsylvania officials report intermittent failures in statewide 911 service
"Pennsylvania is experiencing a statewide intermittent 911 outage," the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) said in an alert Friday. "Individuals experiencing issues contacting 911 are asked to contact their local 911 center on their non-emergency lines. Check your (county's) social media and website for more information."
Randy Padfield, director of PEMA, stressed at a news conference that the issues were intermittent and began around 2 p.m. when some calls failed to be delivered.
PEMA's 911 team began investigating the issue immediately to "identify the root cause of the issue as a standard practice," Padfield said.
A conference bridge line was established between all public safety answering points, he said. And because several counties were reporting the same issue and the cause hadn't been identified, "out of an abundance of caution, a statewide Wireless Emergency Alert and emergency alert System message was sent to the public to notify them of the intermittent issues," he said.
"Currently, our teams are engaged with the public safety answering points or 911 centers and the Next Gen 911 service provider, monitoring the system, and the system continues to have some intermittent connectivity issues at this point in time," he said. "They are still trying to troubleshoot."
He said while the cause has yet to be identified, the majority of calls are going through, and Pennsylvanians should continue to call 911 if they need help.
If a call doesn't go through, "they should use the backup seven-digit administrative line or follow the instructions of their local 911 center or public safety answering point," he added. But he urged people not to call 911 just to test if it's working.
"If they test the system and hang up on the system, that is considered an abandoned call," he explained. "The 911 centers have to go back and investigate that call. So, we ask for the public's cooperation. As we continue, we'll provide additional updates as they become available."
He said there's a "tremendous" amount of redundancy built into the Next Gen 911 system.
"We've seen it actually perform flawlessly for a lot of severe weather incidents where there are a lot of 911 calls coming into the system," Padfield said, adding that the situation is more of an "anomaly for us and for the Next Gen 911 service provider.
"We want to resolve it in the shortest amount of time possible."
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said on X Friday that he had been briefed by PEMA on the "intermittent 911 outage currently happening in some parts of Pennsylvania. We are on top of the issue and working to restore full service as quickly as possible. In the meantime — stay calm, follow the directions of PEMA and local authorities, and do not call 911 for any reason other than an emergency."
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