911 Problems Extended Beyond Virginia Following June ‘Derecho’

"For communications networks there was good news and bad news,” Turetsky said. “The good news is that in many areas communications services held up very well and in most areas where they did not, restoration of service proceeded at pace. But that was not nearly the case everywhere. ... Some isolated 911 facilities were hit especially hard.” The FCC has found there were “isolated breakdowns” in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Pennsylvania as well as “systemic failures” in northern Virginia and West Virginia.

"A significant number of public safety answering points, or PSAPs, couldn’t receive and properly dispatch E911 calls at all,” Turetsky said. “Once some connectivity was restored, many PSAPs were partially down for several days. The seriousness and impact of these PSAP outages and impairments is illustrated clearly by what happened throughout much of northern Virginia.” In Fairfax County, outages affected both primary and backup facilities, he said. “The result was that the PSAP serving most of the 1.1 million people of Fairfax County couldn’t receive any 911 calls for several hours. Even after arrangements for rerouting 911 calls finally were made, 911 service was significantly degraded for days.” West Virginia experienced “serious problems with even more PSAPs knocked out of service completely than in northern Virginia,” he said.

The FCC got involved as soon as the storm was over, monitoring problems closely, Turetsky said. It granted an emergency special temporary authority so a utility could use certain frequencies to assist in power restoration in Ohio on Saturday, he said. The FCC also issued a set of consumer tips for communicating during an emergency. The Public Safety Bureau also launched an inquiry. “Our focus is to learn all the facts and circumstances of the outages and disruptions in service, including the causes,” Turetsky said. “Those not only include the PSAPs, but also cell sites, interconnection switches and other facilities that prevented consumers from using wireless and wired and broadband communications to reach emergency providers at a time when consumers were more likely than ever to need to do so. Our goal is simple -- to use this information to make people safer.” The bureau is also examining its own processes and how it collects information, he said.

"There’s no question that things went wrong, during and after the derecho,” Genachowski said. Problems “were significant,” he said. “They resulted in 911 going dark in a number of different places, much longer than it should.” Wednesday’s public notice mentioned the possibility of the FCC again imposing backup power rules (http://xrl.us/bnhcmq). “Backup power is one the things that we'll look up in the course of this investigation and the inquiry,” Genachowski said. The FCC embraced a backup power requirement for wireless facilities following Hurricane Katrina, and then retrenched, withdrawing the rules in the face of disapproval by the Office of Management and Budget (CD Dec 2/08 p1) and a challenge by carriers in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

"The public probably doesn’t know, but we do have 24/7 operation,” said Commissioner Robert McDowell. “The scope and the damage caused by the derecho was simply overwhelming.” While upwards of 2.5 million in the greater Washington, D.C., area lost access to 911 service “the exact cause or causes” remain unknown, he said. “That is unacceptable, but you're on it,” McDowell said. “We must do all that we can to ensure that such a widespread outage never happens again. Not only must be prepared for unforeseen natural phenomena, but being the capital of the United States we must be prepared for potential terrorist attacks as well and having a hardened and reliable 911 system is absolutely critical to the public interest.”

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said she visited the Fairfax County PSAP this week. “The head of Fairfax County’s Department of Public Safety Communications described an eerie quiet in the aftermath of the storm, as the calls into 911 quickly and implausibly ceased,” she said. “This put lives at danger. It put our safety at risk and it deserves our attention.” Commissioner Ajit Pai said the storm “exposed a very serious set of issues that deserves the commission’s attention.” He asked that the report be concluded quickly.

"While the FCC already receives information about service outages through our mandatory Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) and voluntary Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS), given the extent of the outages last month, it is appropriate to learn more about the impact of the storm on emergency and 911 communications networks,” said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. “I also appreciate that the public notice asks questions related to whether Next Generation 911 tools and technologies, could have improved the reliability of communications networks."

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials commended the FCC for quickly seeking public comment on the recent local 911 changes caused by the derecho. “APCO is pleased to see the Commission seek public comment on the recent local 9-1-1 outages, and looks forward to partnering with the FCC and other stakeholders to address the critical questions raised, which will ultimately help prevent future outages from occurring,” First Vice President Terry Hall said in a statement. Hall and the incoming APCO president met with Genachowski, Clyburn, staff of the other commissioners, and Turetsky Wednesday to discuss the outages.