Equipment blamed for Lanark 911 failure
Posted Jul 26, 2013 01:56:43 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
MISSISSIPPI MILLS, Ont. – Lanark County officials say a piece of electronic equipment is to blame for a 911 outage in early July.
A man collapsed outside his church in Clayton, west of Almonte, when he was doing yardwork. He later died. Neighbours’ calls to 911 rang with no answer.
The head of Lanark County’s emergency services tells 1310News, he’s been told that a network card failed and that the piece of electronic equipment wasn’t connecting incoming 911 calls.
Rick Hannah says the outage only affected Lanark County, and only lasted about 15 minutes.
A total of six calls were unable to get through to 911 during the outage. Hanna says he’s been assured all six calls were with regards to the collapse of the man in Clayton, and that no other calls were made during that time period.
Bell Canada said it had already been alerted to the problem by an internal alarm when calls weren’t being answered, and was already working on it when Lanark County informed the 911 call centre of the problem.
Hannah says Bell is working on new protocol to detect any problems with 911, sooner.
