Pennsylvania experiencing intermittent statewide 911 system outage
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as been briefed on a statewide outage that Pennsylvanians could be experiencing.
According to Pennsylvania Management Director Randy Padfield, the intermittent outage was detected around 2 p.m. on Friday.
The intermittent connectivity issues continues to affect the system.
Padfield said during a conference addressing the statewide outages that some data was missing from calls, such as location data or call back number data, even if the majority of calls had gone through.
The Next Generation 911 service provider that provides the network services for the Commonwealth detected around 2 p.m. that some calls were intermittently failing to be delivered.
The detection was originally seen with calls going into the Delaware County 911 Center.
Other counties around Pennsylvania began to report having similar issues.
According to Padfield, without having an answer as to the root cause at this time, and out of an abundance of caution, a statewide wireless emergency alert and emergency alert system message was released to alert the public of the intermittent issues.
Officials are working together to troubleshoot the connectivity issues.
At this time, it is recommended that those experiencing an emergency should continue to try and call 9-1-1.
It is recommended that anyone having difficulty calling 9-1-1, or if the call drops, they should follow the instructions of their 911 center administrative line or public safety answering point.
It is not recommended that the public call 9-1-1 as a test to see if the system is working as "it creates some challenges with the traffic coming into the 911 system" according to Padfield.
Troubleshooting is ongoing to investigate the cause of the intermittent outages.
At this time, it is unknown when the intermittent outages will be resolved.
