All 911 calls are reaching dispatchers in Allegheny County after Pennsylvania faced a statewide "intermittent" 911 outage on Friday, preventing some callers from reaching 911.  

The county's 911 communications center was back to normal operations around 5 p.m. on Friday, just two hours after issues began, according to an Allegheny County Emergency Management Division spokesperson. It was one of the first counties to announce it was back online in western Pennsylvania. 

Around midnight on Saturday, the state announced 911 services had been restored across the commonwealth  

Pennsylvania 911 outages explained

The outage was first detected on the eastern side of the state at 2 p.m., with issues beginning in Allegheny County at 3 p.m., according to the county spokesperson.

At 3:30 p.m. on Friday, phones across the state received an alert about the issue and the option to reach 911 dispatchers using what are traditionally non-emergency lines. 

Most, but not all, calls were going through in Allegheny County during the two hours of issues, the county spokesperson said. By 6 p.m. on Friday, that was the case across the state, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Director Randy Padfield said at the time. 

At Ross/West View EMS, paramedic supervisor Charles Reinert said it didn't impact them directly, but at many fire and EMS stations, situations like this would lead them to have someone always ready to pick up the phones, harkening back to a time before 911 existed. 

The risk of 911 issues is that it could lead to a delayed response by emergency services, he said. 

"It's a shame," Reinert said. "It's certainly far, far light years above where it used to be years back. It's something that, all in all, day by day, usually works very well."

Padfeild said in some cases, while calls were getting through to dispatchers, those dispatchers couldn't see the location of a 911 call.   

"We understand this is concerning because people want to have faith in the 911 system. Like I said, we have procedures in place to troubleshoot this," Padfeild said. 

The issue lies with the Next Gen 911 system, he said, which is a contracted vendor. He did not rule out a cause as being with software, hardware or a cyberattack. 

"There are a number of technical experts on their end who are trying to determine what the causal factor may be," Padfield said. 

Locally, people like Mark Hoffman understand the need for a fix.  

"It's a very important system. That's our go-to for every emergency," Hoffman said. "I think they need to troubleshoot the problem, ask why did this happen and how can it be prevented moving forward."