The number of E-911 calls that did not go through during a six-hour outage Friday was double the original estimate.
About 100 attempted emergency calls could not be completed on Nov. 28, as opposed to the 45 previously reported by Vermont’s Enhanced 911 Board, according David Tucker, the director of the board.
An additional 55 callers were identified by Intrado Inc., the state’s current 911 system operator, that weren’t included in the list provided by FairPoint Communications. Another five callers were identified by Intrado on Monday.
The state has contacted all but five of the people who placed returnable calls, Tucker said Tuesday, and he’s not aware of any emergencies that were exacerbated by the outage.
“The good news is that of the callback numbers we got, we haven’t found any situations where people didn’t get the help they needed,” Tucker said Tuesday.
Reports that a Montgomery resident fell and had to wait two hours for an ambulance were based on inaccurate information. The injured person’s family told VTDigger they had no problem getting through to 911 and an ambulance arrived in about 15 minutes. Tucker reported the delay to the media because he received an email about the incident, which proved to be based on inaccurate, third-party information when followed up by VTDigger.
The calls Intrado provided were from mobile devices or voice-over IP calls (VoIP), that FairPoint could not have identified, Tucker said.
The Intrado-identified callers were not included in a Saturday news release on the outage because the state received them after the release was issued at 6 p.m.
Tucker was out of state Monday for a previously scheduled speaking engagement and was not available to update the media.
Several 911 calls could not be returned because they were placed from deactivated cellphones, which are still able to make emergency calls but can’t receive incoming calls.
One call came from a pay phone and several others came from addresses listed as vacant. Even after speaking with local law enforcement and emergency responders, Tucker said he did not have a good explanation for how those calls were placed.
Tucker said the amount of time that transpired before FairPoint and Intrado provided the state with callback numbers for people who dialed 911 during the outage is unacceptable.
A FairPoint spokeswoman said the company is doing a root-cause analysis of the outage, but did not respond to questions about the delay in providing Vermont with callback numbers for that group.
It took close to 18 hours for FairPoint to manually check a log of attempted calls to see which ones were emergency calls and provide that list to the state, he said. The state received the list from Intrado a few hours later.
It’s unlikely the outage could have been prevented, Tucker said.
The outage was caused by a tree falling on one of FairPoint’s fiber lines in New Hampshire. The backup system was routed through a FairPoint data center in the Granite State, which experienced a power surge as hundreds of customers there had their power restored Friday after Wednesday’s Nor’easter.
But the outage does raise a question about whether a single backup system is sufficient for Vermont’s E-911 system, Tucker said.
It’s likely the E-911 Board would lease another backup circuit, if additional redundancy is necessary. Tucker wasn’t sure what that might cost or whether it would require an additional appropriation from the Legislature.
FairPoint will take over operation of the E-911 system next year.
The Department of Public Service announced this week that it will petition the Public Service Board to investigate FairPoint for persistent service quality complaints.
More than 1,700 members of the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are on strike against FairPoint in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
The FairPoint spokeswoman said the company will comply with any investigation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., urged FairPoint on Tuesday to negotiate with striking workers.
“The best way for FairPoint to improve its customer service right now is to agree to a contract that is fair to the workers so they can return to their jobs and provide quality service for Vermonters,” Sanders said in a news release.
