Both Arlington and Fairfax counties are experiencing problems with their 911 systems.
If you have an emergency and need to contact the police or fire departments, call the following numbers:
- In Arlington County: 703-741-3035
- In Fairfax County: 703-691-2233
Officials are looking into the cause of the outages.
A Verizon representative issued the following updated statement on the outage Friday afternoon:
At this point it appears that a Verizon service issue starting around 9:10 a.m. affected customers primarily in Arlington and Fairfax counties. (We haven’t found effects on calls to 911 in other jurisdictions such as Alexandria, Manassas, Loudoun and Prince William.). It appears that a faulty piece of equipment in Verizon’s Fairfax switching center caused the service issue.
Calls to 911 from Internet-based phones and landline phones served by the Arlington and Fairfax 911 centers were automatically redirected to these 911 centers via an alternate path in the Verizon network. The equipment failure, however, may have intermittently affected wireless calls to 911 in Arlington and Fairfax counties. This is still under investigation.
The faulty equipment was restored to normal operation around 11:30 a.m., and we continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure the issue is completely resolved.
This issue is unrelated to the 911 issues triggered by storm-related mass call events earlier this year.
Stay with NBCWashington.com for more information.
