Emergency 911 Systems Go Down Across Pennsylvania, Officials Say

Residents in Pennsylvania are urged to call their local 911 center if there is an emergency, the alert said.

A woman talks on the phone in a call center, in this file photo. Reza Estakhrian/Getty Images

The state of Pennsylvania on Friday said in an “extreme” emergency alert that 911 lines are down across the state, sending alerts to residents’ phones.

State officials are urging people who are having problems calling 911 to call “their local 911 center” on their non-emergency phone lines, according to an alert that was seen by The Epoch Times.

The alert asked residents to check their counties’ social media pages and websites for more information. Officials designated the alert as “extreme.”

An Epoch Times reporter who lives and works in New York state and who has a phone number with a New York City area code received the alert at around 3:35 p.m. ET.

State authorities did not specify why the statewide 911 system was down as of Friday afternoon.

Last year, law enforcement agencies across several states reported major 911 outages that left millions of people unable to contact emergency personnel. At the time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in a post that it was aware of reports of outages and that it was investigating.

It’s unclear whether the FCC would investigate the Pennsylvania outage. The Epoch Times has contacted the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, which issued the alerts, and the FCC for comment.

In February 2024, an outage impacting AT&T and Cricket Wireless customers left tens of thousands of people without service for hours, also impacting 911 lines. The carrier said that the outage was caused by a technical error, not a cyberattack, which was confirmed by the FCC.

The Department of Homeland Security has warned in a report of increased risks of cyber attacks on 911 services as they have migrated to digital systems based on Internet Protocol standards. Several cyberattacks targeting 911 systems have taken down the services in recent years, one of which, in 2017, paralyzed 911 centers in more than a dozen states.

“As cyber threats grow in complexity and sophistication, attacks could be more severe against” 911 systems because hackers “can launch multiple distributed attacks with greater automation from a broader geography against more targets,” read the report.

A cyberattack targeted the Department of Emergency Communications in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which had impacted the county’s 911 dispatch system, officials confirmed last year. According to a statement released by the country, the attackers appeared to have used ransomware, which demands that the victim pay large sums to the attacker or hacking group in order to allow them to regain access to their compromised systems.