ROCKVILLE, Md. — Montgomery County officials responsible for keeping the county’s 911 system up and running will appear before the County Council Tuesday.
Their appearance before the county council follows a 911 system outage where the system was down from 11:10 p.m. Sunday, July 10, to 1:09 a.m. Monday, July 11. A cooling unit that served the county’s backup system had shut down, which in turn caused the failure of the county’s 911 communications server.
The members of the Montgomery County Council are expected to quiz the panel about how and why the 911 call center that serves a county of nearly a million people could shut down for nearly two hours.
Assistant Police Chief Luther Reynolds says the 911 system is overseen by the police department with the close cooperation of the Department of General Services, along with the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service.
Two people died while the 911 system was out, although it’s unclear whether the deaths were directly related to the outage. Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett has called for an audit of the entire 911 system.
