By Eric Eyre, Charleston Gazette
Original publication date: April 20, 2011

Kanawha County, W.Va. — Kanawha County 911 Center officials are cooperating with a Federal Communications Commission investigation of 911 outages in Maryland.

FCC engineers interviewed Kanawha County 911 Director Carolyn Charnock last week, after reading reports about a similar 911 emergency failure in Charleston during an April 5 storm.

Kanawha County’s 911 system shut down during the peak of the storm. The system relies on trunk lines built by Verizon – the same company being investigated in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland.

Frontier Communications now owns the lines, after purchasing Verizon’s landline business in West Virginia on July 1.

“The FCC is interested in what happened here to see if we can help solve the problem in Maryland,” Charnock said Tuesday. “They’re trying to see if there’s a solution to keep this from happening again. Frontier is looking at this here as well.”

Frontier spokesman Dan Page said the FCC has not contacted the company about 911’s April 5 outage in Kanawha County.

The FCC and Maryland Public Service Commission have started investigations into Verizon – the sole provider of 911 services in that state.

“We are cooperating fully with their investigation,” said Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper.

The Maryland PSC has already found that in four separate incidents – dating back to July – large numbers of callers trying to reach 911 centers in Maryland received busy signals, according to The Washington Post.

Verizon also never reported the outages to county emergency officials in Maryland, the Post reported.

During a Jan. 26 snowstorm, about 10,000 calls to emergency dispatchers in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties were greeted with busy signals. Nearby Fairfax County, Va., also recently reported an outage in its 911 service, which is operated by Verizon.

“The FCC is looking at what happened from an emergency standpoint and notification requirements,” Charnock said. “The FCC is aware of the problems with the Verizon network. Our situation was a similar situation.”

During the April 5 outage in Kanawha County, 911 operators discovered they weren’t receiving emergency calls at the height of the storm. Some calls rolled over to 10-digit non-emergency numbers at the center. County officials believe the high volume of calls caused the 911 trunk lines to shut down.

Frontier workers ran a diagnostic program and manually rebooted the system, Charnock said. Some 911 lines were restored after about 20 minutes, and all lines were back in service after an hour, she said.

Charnock spoke to FCC investigators last Thursday.

About the Author
Reach Eric Eyre at [email protected] or 304-348-4869. 

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Related Links:

• “FCC Wants Answers on 10,000 Dropped 9-1-1 Calls,” Feb. 24, 2011
• “Investigations into Verizon 9-1-1 Failures, Latest Outage in Virginia,” by Leah Fabel, The Washington Examiner, Feb. 20, 2011
• “Verizon Asked to Probe ‘Alarming’ Dropped 911 Calls,” by Todd Shields, Bloomberg, Feb. 18, 2011.
• Click here to read the letter from the FCC.