The Massachusetts State 911 Department is still investigating what caused a statewide outage of the 911 emergency system for multiple hours Tuesday afternoon, officials said as they announced that residents could resume dialing 911 to report any emergencies.
The outage, which was first reported around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and was resolved by about 3:45 p.m., came as a dangerous heat wave settles in over Massachusetts and as Boston prepares to host a victory parade for the NBA champion Boston Celtics on Friday. While the system was down, people experiencing an emergency were urged to contact the direct line for their local police department, activate a firebox if one is in service near them, or go to the nearest police or fire station.
The State 911 Department said it would provide more information as it becomes available.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu called attention to the outage early Tuesday afternoon at the beginning of her press conference with public safety officials to talk about this week’s extreme heat and Friday’s Celtics parade.
“Never a dull moment,” the mayor said. “And we just wanted to start actually with a notification that currently the statewide 911 system is down and calls are not going through. We’ve been in touch with the state and with all the relevant officials to work on getting this resolved.”
The outage also came up, albeit in an entirely different way, during the Mass. Department of Transportation board meeting taking place Tuesday afternoon.
“Are we getting hit by a tornado? I left my phone on the desk … Hopefully it’s not an alarm for the project,” MassDOT Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver said when his presentation on the Allston multimodal project was interrupted by at least one phone in the MassDOT board room going off with an alert about the 911 outage.
The State 911 Department exists within the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, and is funded through a $1.50-a-month fee on all devices that can access the 911 system, like cellphones.
“The Massachusetts statewide enhanced 911 system is one of the largest systems per capita in the United States. A person dialing 911 from anywhere in the Commonwealth is automatically connected to the Public Safety Answering Point handling emergencies in that area. The system provides the phone number and address of the telephone used to make the emergency call (wireline calls) or the phone number and approximate location of the caller (wireless calls), along with dispatching data for local police, fire and ambulance services,” the department wrote in its latest annual report. “PSAP personnel dispatch, either directly or indirectly, emergency response services based upon the needs of the caller.”
