Nov 1, 2017 3 min read

WAYNESBURG – The lengthy outage of Greene County’s 911 phone number Tuesday night is prompting county and state officials to sound the alarm about telecommunications issues in the area.

A selective router inside the call center in Waynesburg that transfers emergency calls from across Greene County directly to dispatchers went offline about 5:45 p.m., leaving residents without the ability to dial 911 for more than four hours.

Greene County Emergency Management Director Greg Leathers said they received a radio call from a Cumberland Township police officer who told them a resident was unable to call them using 911. That prompted the center to urge anyone with an emergency to call the centers nonemergency phone number at 724-852-2911, which was still in service, while they diagnosed and fixed the problem with the equipment in the building.

Windstream provides telecommunication services to the call center, and Leathers said a contractor with the company worked with emergency officials to get the selective router back online by 10 p.m. He said they have had other issues in the past, but nothing like what occurred Tuesday night.

“We haven’t documented any serious issues in which people could not get through,” Leathers said of the outage.

The department is now performing an “after-action report (to) find out exactly what went wrong and what do we have to do to prevent it from happening again.” They’re also “exploring other avenues” to find a more reliable telephone routing system for the dispatch center, Leathers said.

Hours after the incident, state Rep. Pam Snyder, who has long been critical of Windstream’s service in the county, met with company officials Wednesday afternoon to voice her displeasure with the telecommunications provider. Although the meeting had been scheduled before the outage to discuss slow internet speeds in rural areas, Snyder used the occasion to raise safety concerns about the service.

“I told them how deeply concerned I am,” said Snyder, D-Jefferson.

She said the company is working with the Greene County commissioners and Leathers to figure out why the outage occurred and what can be done to prevent it from recurring. Until then, Snyder said state officials need to continue working to improve internet service to rural areas.

“We need to identify why we can’t get to where we need to be,” Snyder said. “We can’t fix this overnight.”

A spokesman for Windstream said the company is looking into the situation, but did not immediately know what caused the problem.