Emergency-Number Failures Should Worry Policymakers, Officials Say

People should be concerned by recent reports of 911 failures, including the widespread AT&T outage last spring (see 1703230075), said Texas 9-1-1 Alliance Jim Goerke: “Anything that potentially interrupts the delivery of a 911 call is a major deal.” Telecom networks are moving to IP, so 911 infrastructure should evolve, too, said Goerke, a working group chairman last year on the FCC Task Force on Optimal Public Safety Answering Point Architecture. "How we do that in a thoughtful and safe way is going to be really important."

“We want 911 to work and we want it to work every call,” said Nebraska Public Service Commissioner Crystal Rhoades. The PSC contracted with Mission Critical Partners to test reliability of 911 systems and plan for NG-911, with a report due to the state legislature this year. "We've had some tragic deaths" due to unreliable 911 location services,” Rhoades said. She saw calls routed to incorrect public safety answering points (PSAPs) -- across state lines or on the other side of a river -- and high call volumes overwhelming 911 centers, she said. “It's not having the system configured so that the call always goes to the correct PSAP. It's not having enough staff. It's not having adequate" interoperability.

The FCC, providers and emergency officials should harden 911 networks "to ensure that calls aren't interrupted," and that appropriate measures are in place to resolve outages and notify the public, Goerke said. Stakeholders must work together, share information and follow standards and best practices, said National Emergency Number Association PSAP Operations Director Christopher Carver. Make systems redundant, maintain equipment and have backup plans, he said.

Harvey

Preparation paid off during Hurricane Harvey and its continuing aftermath in Harris County, home to Houston, Goerke said. But surging call volume and difficulty quickly locating callers challenged 911 operators, he said. Other 911 centers weren't as fortunate, FCC data shows (see 1709010042).

“All resources were utilized and contingencies at all agencies were put into place to [ensure] that 9-1-1 communications remained in service,” Harris County said in a Friday statement. All phone systems suffered heavy congestion, it said. The county gets 300-600 calls hourly on a normal day; during the storm, the hourly call rate peaked at 3,000, it said. The county has been transitioning to NG-911 for several years, and that helped it transfer 911 voice and data “to call centers throughout a much wider region and [made] it very easy to move call centers and add call positions,” it said.

The FCC has a 911 outages workshop Monday (see 1708240033). "Having just returned from Texas to speak firsthand with disaster victims and first responders," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai "continues to work with state 911 authorities, its federal partners, and other governing entities to promote a coordinated, industry-led approach to NG911," a spokesman said Friday. "Chairman Pai has pushed for the advancement of next-generation 911 to help keep Americans safe and has long advocated for taking advantage of technology to enable the benefits of next-generation 911 for all Americans." Pai applauded Dallas's NG-911 transition, in a Friday tweet.

Hurricane Irma early on knocked out parts of four PSAPs in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, FCC data showed Thursday. Friday's update had the same 911 outage information. Strong winds make Irma especially destructive (see 1709080047).

Challenges

Much 911 technology was built before the internet. "This is an industry that came together in the '60s, '70s and '80s, so it was really built in an era of analog phone communications [with] no concept of data," said RapidSOS CEO Michael Martin.

Technical problems are tough to quickly diagnose on legacy networks, where one can’t see "the whole chain of links from the time the caller makes the call to the time the 911 center answers the call," said NENA CEO Brian Fontes. "You may not know … there's one link that's broken."

Institutional complexity of the America’s 911 system makes addressing outages and upgrading the network difficult, because there's not one agency overseeing one national 911 system, Carver said: "It grew up much more locally than that and much more as a partnership between vendors and local communities and the public to develop the 911 system,” he said. “It's a strength of our 911 system, but it's also a challenge … in events like outages to make sure everybody's on the same page and takes appropriate action.”

Difficulty coordinating among various local 911 authorities has complicated progress deploying NG-911 around the country, said Tennessee Emergency Communications Board Director Curtis Sutton. Having a centralized 911 state board smoothed planning and implementation in Tennessee, he said. The state deployed its core NG-911 network in 2011; of 142 PSAPs in the state, about 100 joined the NG-911 network and the state plans to add the rest "within the next calendar year,” he said.

"Sometimes, what the public perceives as a 911 outage is actually not an outage," Carver said. It may be an "operational challenge," such as not having enough 911 employees to answer calls, especially in a disaster, the NENA official said.

Finding and keeping trained staff is hard, said Marana Police Department Communications Supervisor Sheila Blevins, 911 coordinator for Pima County, Arizona. It takes 12 to 18 months to fully train a 911 professional and some agencies have turnover rates around 40 percent, she said. "They're constantly training and hiring and trying to keep sufficient staffing.”

"Most states are in funding crisis for 911 systems," Blevins said. Arizona has a 20-cent 911 fee on phone bills that doesn’t fully fund 911 needs; the state previously diverted $50 million from that fund for unrelated uses, she said. “When those sweeps occurred, it affected us tremendously,” she said. “We lost out on grant funds that were dependent on the states following the rules for the management of those accounts. We fell behind on development and product delivery and [replacing] end-of-life equipment.” Arizona hasn't diverted funds in the past few years, but there's no law against it, she said. The Arizona 911 Program Office couldn't provide information by our deadline.

Editor's Note: This is Part I of an occasional series of stories on 911 problems. A past series showed the extent of states' 911 fee diversion (see 1605270020, 1605310046 and 1609230042).