Montgomery County, Md., Probes 911 Outage
County officials will investigate a two-hour 911 outage in Montgomery County, Maryland, the county said in a news release Monday. From 11:10 p.m. Sunday to 1:09 a.m. the next morning, callers received a busy signal. During the outage, fire and…
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rescue units responded to two medical emergency calls involving fatalities -- a 91-year-old woman from Olney and a 40-year-old man from Twinbrook, the county said. The outage also affected dispatch console radios, but staff quickly switched to backup radios, it said. The county said it notified the public through public safety social media and the county emergency alert system. The outage occurred at the Alternate Emergency Communications Center in Rockville, which was activated three-and-a-half weeks ago while the county made hardware changes at the main center in Gaithersburg. County Executive Ike Leggett said he wants "a thorough evaluation of the systems that support 911 to make sure that the systems have the stability to withstand whatever power surges or blips that could cascade into even a partial system outage. County residents must be able to count on a prompt response to emergencies.” The county said it already ruled out an external power loss or failure of backup generators: “It is believed that it initially occurred due to an internal equipment failure of a cooling (air conditioning) system in the IT room of the AECC which then shut down the 911 system to prevent overheating.”