The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, or PEMA, is hiring a State College company to find out what led to last month’s 911 outage. For more than eight hours on July 11, many people across the state could not dial 911 for emergencies.
PEMA released a preliminary report in late July about the cause of the outage. That report found a defect in the 911 operating system. Officials say the disruptions are not believed to be from a cyber attack.
But that’s only a preliminary report. Now, PEMA is spending $72,600 to hire 911 Authority in State College to investigate further. It’s a private consulting agency that has also worked with the states of Maine, Indiana, Alabama, South Dakota, Wisconsin and California.
PEMA said this independent review will identify any issues with the 911 system and assess the state’s response.
"Conducting an AAR (After-Action Review) is something PEMA does for all incidents and is part of the Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP) standards," said Jeff Jumper, PEMA's Deputy Communications Director.
PEMA applied for an emergency procurement to contract 911 Authority. In that application, PEMA said the AAR needs to be completed in a timely manner.
"Any delay could cause more 911 outages to happen again, and emergencies may not be handled in an appropriate manner causing a threat to public health, welfare and safety," Brandon McGowan wrote. "If this were to be solicited through the bidding process it would delay the process even further creating the potential for more threats."
PEMA expects the independent review to be completed in a few months.
