ALEXANDRIA, Va —Today, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau released its anticipated report and recommendations following the “Derecho” storm that impacted the mid-Atlantic region six months ago. This brief, but violent storm led to extensive loss of 9-1-1 services, and revealed the importance of determining the causes and actions that can be taken to help prevent similar 9-1-1 outages in the future.
With the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International’s full support, including comments filed with the FCC, and the input of affected public safety answering points, state and local government agency officials and commercial 9-1-1 service providers, the Bureau quickly undertook a thorough review, leading to today’s report.
APCO President Terry Hall said “today’s report confirms that adherence to existing best practices on the part of the commercial carriers would ordinarily have prevented much of the outages that unfortunately occurred.” Hall continued, “APCO appreciates the hard work of the FCC staff, and the steps that service providers have already taken to improve 9-1-1 network resiliency. The report’s recommendations, which are consistent with APCO’s publicly filed comments, reflect common sense steps that all stakeholders can take to ensure that 9-1-1 networks are as reliable as possible, including in the face of large scale emergencies.”
Also today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced plans to launch a new rulemaking to “strengthen the reliability and resiliency nationwide of our country’s 9-1-1 communications networks during major disasters.” Especially in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, “APCO also looks forward to continuing to work with the Commission on ways to further ensure the resiliency of 9-1-1 communications, which might call for more specific requirements on the part of 9-1-1 service providers,” said Hall.
CONTACT: Meghan McCluskey
571-312-4400
mccluskeym@apcointl.org