http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-calls26-2008aug26,0,303413.story
911 call system in Orange County suffers weekend outage
The emergency call system was down in parts of the county for about 90
minutes early Saturday as phone companies set up the new 657 area code overlay.
By My-Thuan Tran
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:15 PM PDT, August 25, 2008
Orange County's 911 emergency call system broke down in parts of the county
early Saturday when a glitch occurred as phone companies set up a new area
code for the region, the Sheriff's Department said today.
The system crashed between 2:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. in the central and southern
parts of the county, said Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim
Amormino. The department usually receives nine 911 calls during that time
period, Amormino said, but there were no reports of emergencies that were
missed.
"We don't have any reports from anyone that had dire needs," he said.
A caller alerted the Sheriff's Department to the problem, Amormino said,
and the department contacted AT&T, which corrected the problem.
The Sheriff's Department is working on an additional backup system in case
of future 911 failures, Amormino said.
The problem occurred in areas where the California Public Utilities
Commission assigned new numbers in the region with a 657 area code. The
so-called overlay requires users within the 714 and 657 areas to dial 11
digits when calling even within the same area code. The PUC activated the
overlay early Saturday.
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George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
