Two Days, Two Separate 911 And Phone Outages

June 25, 2011

In two unrelated incidents during a two day period, thousands of Escambia and Santa Rosa county residents were unable to call 911 or make regular landline phone calls from their homes and business.

Friday night, Frontier Communications customers in Walnut Hill, Bratt and Molino were unable to call 911 or make other calls outside of the Frontier network due to a problem with fiber optic equipment in North Escambia. The outage lasted just over five hours, from about 5 p.m. until about 10:15 p.m.

Thursday morning, AT&T landline customers in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties were unable to call 911 or make many other types of calls for about an hour. That outage occurred after a construction crew hit a fiber optic cable in Escambia County.

During the outages, the counties activated their 911 outage plan, encouraging residents that needed fire, ambulance, law enforcement or other emergency services to either call 911 from their cellular phone or go to their nearest fire station.

During Friday night’s five-hour outage, Escambia County Fire Rescue volunteers manned fire stations in Walnut Hill and Molino in the event someone had an emergency.

Comments

3 Responses to “Two Days, Two Separate 911 And Phone Outages”

  1. Denzl on July 20th, 2011 3:17 am

    EJ – why ever not? I’m an old timer, with an old timer’s SVC tracfone, and I’ve never had any problems? The article in any case states that land lines were effected, and that mobile phones were recommended…why would I be disappointed?

  2. EJ on June 25th, 2011 9:45 am

    Well, don’t purchase a new TracFone and hope to be able to use it for emergency calls. You will be greatly disappointed.

  3. ProudArmyParent on June 25th, 2011 9:18 am

    Thanks for clarifying that! :)

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News