Report: PA 911 Outages Caused by System Issue, Not Cyberattack

A Pennsylvania 911 call system outage that occurred earlier this month is being blamed on a technical issue, not a cyberattack, according to a preliminary report on the matter.

On Friday, July 11, people who called 911 in Pennsylvania experienced intermittent service disruptions.

A briefing from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) on Tuesday, July 22, revealed that the problem resulted from an operating system failure with Next Generation 911. The system receives and directs 911 telephone callers to 911 centers.

"As soon as the intermittent outages started, our vendors and partner public safety organizations began to investigate the cause and take steps to resolve the issue," said Jeff Boyle, PEMA's executive deputy director, to CBS News Philadelphia. "We activated the Emergency Alert System and issued Wireless Emergency Alerts as a precautionary measure to notify everyone in Pennsylvania of the issue and to follow county-based backup plans should they not be able to reach the 911 centers by calling the traditional three-digit phone number."

"Our team got on it immediately yesterday, restored 911 capabilities relatively quickly, and also put out guidance on what folks should do in that interim. I thought they handled it really well. They worked closely with our county officials," Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a media statement.

NBC10 Philadelphia reported that the outage came after Pennsylvania switched to the Next Generation 911 System in April. The move to the Next Generation 911 System brought the state's emergency centers in line with the latest technology that allows callers to send photos and videos to dispatchers.

PEMA officials said they are working to create a more detailed investigation into the incident with plans to improve the system, the brief said.

PEMA advises residents to save the phone numbers for city and county non-emergency 911 lines in their phones in case of another disruption.