Northern Virginia residents in need of emergency 911 services on Friday found themselves unable to get through to operators due to flawed Verizon equipment, according to county and company officials. The problems started in Fairfax County, where an alert warning residents of the issues was posted on the county website at about 10 a.m. Arlington County alerted its residents at about 11:35 a.m. Verizon spokesman Harry Mitchell said the service issues started at about 9 a.m. and were cleared up by 11:30 a.m. People using land lines likely had no problems, but people using cell phones, regardless of the network, sometimes could not get through.
Arlington restored its services by 1:30 p.m. But even by late Friday afternoon, Fairfax spokesman Jim Person said the county was still using backup services.
“We’re not going to switch back until we get the green light from Verizon,” Person said.
Fairfax restored its service Friday evening. Mitchell said Verizon is “continuing to monitor the faulty equipment,” and that perhaps Fairfax was taking a “belt and suspenders” approach, meaning they wouldn’t move till absolutely certain all was secure.
Problems extended as far as Loudoun County due to the fact that local jurisdictions sometimes handle each other’s emergency calls.
Person said 911 call volume was not affected, as residents who couldn’t get through used the county’s non-emergency number. Typical 911 call volume is about 1,200 calls in a typical 24-hour period, or an average of 50 calls per hour.
Emergency officials in Fairfax, Arlington and Loudoun counties said that to their knowledge, no major emergencies went untended due to the Verizon breakdown.
Mitchell said Friday’s 911 service problems were unrelated to the recent problems in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties when about 10,000 emergency calls failed to connect during and after the Jan. 26 snowstorm.
