WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Report: 911 Outage Was Preventable
Member Center:
Montpelier, Vermont - December 18, 2008
A new report says FairPoint made several mistakes that led to a 911 outage in September.
The Department of Public Service found the 1-and-a-half hour outage was the result of a series of nine preventable errors. One of the biggest problems-- FairPoint did not have enough redundancy built into the system to prevent outages. It was supposed to have back up lines as part of a network change requested by the E-9-1-1 board. The report also found that the E-9-1-1 Board and its contractor, microData, did not catch the mistakes.
During the outage about 20 people called for help but none had life-threatening problems.
"I think we are very seriously looking at the prospect of penalties. It's not something we do lightly but we think that again, because of what E911 does, we believe it's very important to set an example here and that the public has a sense that there is accountability," Vt. Public Service Dept. Commissioner David O'Brien said.
The report includes recommendations to make sure this does not happen again.
Kristin Carlson - WCAX News
