E911 system across Wiregrass suffers second outage in days
HOUSTON CO., AL (WSFA) - Several E-911 systems across the Wiregrass are working again after an outage Monday evening. This is the second outage in days.
According to Holly Britain, 911 Director of the Dothan/Houston County Commutations District, there was also an outage impacting parts of the Wiregrass last Wednesday.
Britain says the outages are not connected. Monday night's outage was due to a network failure at one of the core hubs, that has since been resolved. Last Wednesday's outage was due to a piece of equipment, which has been fixed. The outages lasted roughly an hour and a half and impacted not only Houston County, but Henry, Geneva, Coffee, and Covington counties.
Britain says to her knowledge no calls were missed during that time. During today's communications board meeting, it was discussed there have been a total of four outages this year. The frequency of the outages is something Britain says is concerning and directors are working to get fixed.
"Looking into the future – technology is every day changing. We have to work through the bugs to get where we want to be and that's not acceptable of course. We try to look past and use what resources we do have to better supply to the citizens of our county," said Britain.
E911 directors say they will meet with local telephone providers, CenturyLink and Troy Cable, along with the state 911 board and Alabama Super Computer Network to discuss the next steps to make sure these outages don't continue.
In the case of an outage, E911 urges people to call the local non-emergency line to get help:
- Dothan: 334-793-0215
- Houston County: 334-677-4808
- Dale County: 334-774-5111
- Geneva County: 334-684-6947
- Henry County: 334-585-2221
- Coffee County: 344-897-2555
- Enterprise: 334-347-2222
- Elba: 344-897-2555
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