At 0542 hours on the morning of January the 8th, Charlotte County E911 experienced a 911 outage that affected both Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office and Punta Gorda Police Departments 911 centers ability to receive and answer 911 calls. When notified of the situation, all 911 calls were immediately re-routed to the Lee County 911 Center. 911 calls were returned to Charlotte Co with a one button transfer and all calls were dispatched immediately. Charlotte County 911 was returned to a normal state at 1047 hours. There were no reports of delays or missed calls during this time period. Charlotte County and Lee Counties have an agreement in place since 2014 for emergency situations such as these. In any type of 911 network whether it be a traditional or IP, failures can happen. Charlotte County has taken measures to insure that calls do not go unanswered in the event of network or equipment failure.
In the case on Jan the 8th, the 911 disruption was a result of a circuit failure that occurred off site. Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office and Punta Gorda Police Department had an upgrade of on site 911 equipment in May of 2016 and there were no issues with this equipment during the failure. Charlotte County E911 is working with the 911 service provider, West Safety Services, to avert such failures in the future.
Laurie Anderson
E911 Coordinator