by Garth Meyer
On Aug. 10, a 911 outage affecting Redondo Beach was caused by an outside issue with AT&T, explained Redondo Beach Police Chief Joe Hoffman this week to Easy Reader. Calls were temporarily routed through the RBPD’s non-emergency line, still answered by 911 operators.
A fire that Sunday at a Gardena AT&T facility led to a service disruption for local subscribers.
“Our 911 system is with Frontier, and was never actually down,” said Chief Hoffman. “We just lost some of our functionality, such as text to 911 and GPS. It was the same people answering the phone, it just didn’t go through the 911 line.”
RBPD 911 operators were informed of the problem, Hoffman said, and were aware that emergency calls may come in on the 10-digit non-emergency line.
“The good news is we don’t think we missed any calls,” the chief said. “We believe that everybody who called was able to get through, and the calls were answered by (RBPD 911). We don’t have any information from the public that anyone called and did not get through.”
The rare situation, and subsequent adjustment, relates to built-in system redundancy, such as if the Redondo Beach 911 center goes down, all calls are routed through the South Bay Regional Communications Dispatch, which is on AT&T.
“It’s good because each agency is on a different carrier,” Hoffman said.
The matter began about 2:30 p.m. Aug. 10, and RBPD received an all-clear about 6 p.m. It was an equipment failure outside the city itself, the chief summarized.
“The highlight here is our Redondo Beach 911 system was never down,” Hoffman said. ER
