911 system issues...incase of emergency

[Fireman David]

We have been notified that the State 911 system is experiencing difficulties.

If you have an emergency and are not able to get through to 911 please call Fairfax Fire or Fairfax Rescue directly.

Fairfax Fire - 849-6075

Fairfax Rescue - 849-2773

Thank you,

Fireman David

[Fireman David]

The State 911 system is back on-line

[Chris Santee]

August 7, 2014 – Montpelier
For Immediate Release – Contact David Tucker, 802-828-2395

As reported yesterday, the statewide emergency 911 system in Vermont experienced a 40 minute outage on August 6th. During that period, callers seeking emergency assistance in Vermont were not able to reach the 911 call centers. The system failure was corrected yesterday and the system has been fully operational since the outage was resolved around 1 PM on August 6th.

The 911 system in Vermont is a fully hosted system provided by a company called Intrado, which is based in Longmont, Colorado. In a statement from Intrado regarding the reason for outage, Intrado Senior Vice President Steve Lowe said “Intrado goes to great lengths to design networks with multiple layers of redundancy.  On August 6, 2014 we experienced a double equipment failure in our network. During system restoration, we discovered another error that caused the network to be temporarily unavailable. Intrado takes our responsibility to 9-1-1 very seriously and are working closely with the State of Vermont on this issue.”

Since the outage yesterday, the Enhanced 911 Board has been focusing primarily on reaching out to those individuals who attempted to call 911 during the outage. All but a few individuals have been contacted and efforts continue to reach those that were not reached yesterday. It appears that everyone who had an emergency was able to get help through their local police or other emergency responders.

David Tucker, Executive Director for the Enhanced 911 Board said “the system was designed to be fully redundant and should not have failed. We are disappointed with the performance of our technology vendor, both for the fact that the system failed and also for the time it took to get the call back numbers for those who were not able to get through to 911 during the outage”, said Tucker. “911 services are supposed to be available at all times, so an outage of this magnitude, even though the duration was short, is not what we expect from our service partners who have been entrusted to manage this system for Vermont. The Board regrets this incident and is taking all reasonable steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again, including raising this issue with the Federal Communications Commission, which is looking into this matter.”

[Fireman David]

Even though we have all been trained to call 911 in the event of an emergency, it is important that we keep the direct phone numbers handy, for an event such as the outage that occurred last week.

I remember growing up with a sticker on the receiver of the wall mounted rotary phone on my kitchen wall, that had the following phone numbers on it; Police, Fire, Ambulance, Hospital, and Poison Control.

It is not just the major system crashes that took out the entire States 911 system that we need to worry about. Several times in the last few years we have had issues that isolated small areas of the State from calling outside their Telephone Exchange. One such instance was a few years back when a car accident took out a utility pole, severing a fiber-optic line. This isolated several areas from making calls to outside their Exchange. Calls could still be made locally, just not out-of Town.

I suggest keeping the following numbers listed in your home, in the event that you need to report an emergency and 911 is not operational.

911 is the primary number to call in the event of an emergency.

The following numbers can be called, if you are not able to get through using 911;

Saint Albans Central Dispatch (this is the same office that answers 911 calls in Franklin County, 24/7)

802-524-2167
or
802-524-2132

Fairfax Fire Department

802-849-6075

Fairfax Rescue

802-849-2773

Vt State Police Dispatch

802-524-5993

Franklin County Sheriff's Office

802-524-2121

The Fire Department and Fairfax Rescue lines are not manned 24/7, however in the event that we are notified of a 911 system outage we will do our best to get someone to the Station as soon as possible.

[Henry]

Thanks Dave, I have just put it on my rolladeck in the front