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An investigation is ongoing to determine the cause of a statewide 911 system outage in Pennsylvania. The outage began on Friday (July 11), affecting emergency services across the state. Residents were advised to use non-emergency lines during the disruption. By Saturday, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) confirmed that 911 services were fully restored.
PEMA Director Randy Padfield described the outage as an "anomaly," emphasizing that the 911 system has previously operated without issues during severe weather and high call volumes. The problem first appeared in Delaware County, near Philadelphia, where some 911 calls failed to reach dispatch centers. Although most calls were still delivered, some lacked crucial data like location or caller ID, complicating emergency responses.
Padfield noted that the issue was not believed to be caused by a cyberattack or software update, suggesting it might be a software glitch or hardware failure. The state's Next Generation 911 (NG911) service provider, Comtech Telecommunications Corp., is conducting a root cause analysis, expected to take several days.
Governor Josh Shapiro thanked the teams involved in restoring services and assured residents that steps are being taken to prevent future outages. The state has implemented multiple layers of redundancy in the 911 system to ensure reliability. Residents are encouraged to save their local non-emergency numbers as a precaution.