Tech Caused 911 Outage

An employee of the communications company Embarq Corp. was the cause of the major 911 outage in Allegheny County (Penn.) in mid-October, company officials have confirmed. A spokesman said the technician was working on the system two months earlier, and forgot to reset a switch that would have routed non-active numbers to the county PSAP. Instead, when the 911 network received a call from a non-active number last Oct. 25th, the call was bounced back and forth between the primary and second 911 computers, eventually tying up the system for other 911 calls. County officials said 69 calls were missed during the outage, but none was reporting a critical emergency.