Switch failure caused 911 outage in December

The December outage followed a nine-minute outage said to be caused by a software upgrade on Sept. 22.

About 10:44 a.m. on Sunday Dec. 16, a Verizon telecommunications line failure switched some 911 calls from the computer system to a backup system that relies on regular phone lines, according to the report. The calls were not received because a loose connection went undetected at the county call center.

Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said covers have been installed to make sure those phone connections do not get dislodged.

And now four backup phone lines are connected at all times.

If Verizon had notified the county that calls were being rerouted, the call center’s staff would have plugged in more backup phones, the report said.

But Verizon waited 22 minutes, checking out the problem and doing ‘‘triage,” before it contacted the county, said Brianna Gowing, Verizon assistant vice president for external affairs.

Verizon ‘‘regrets” the problem and is retraining its employees to react and communicate more quickly, Gowing said.

The county has asked the National Emergency Numbers Association to help review the county’s 911 system and its back up and has asked Verizon for a detailed description of its around-the-clock 911 monitoring, said Bill Ferretti, deputy emergency center director.

‘‘I’m troubled by the fact that the county didn’t have a detailed description of 24-7 monitoring” already, Councilwoman Marilyn J. Praisner (D-Dist.4) of Calverton said.

Verizon and public safety departments need to consider adding an automatic switch to backup call receiving rather than continuing to rely on manual switching, and they need to do a better job notifying the public, Praisner said.

‘‘What troubles me most is that this happened twice in a very short time frame,” said Councilwoman Nancy M. Floreen (D-At large) of Garrett Park. She said other backup systems need to be considered.

BRAC concerns

County department chiefs also told the council that federal officials still have not given them enough information or made adequate provisions to absorb the impact of consolidating military hospital operations at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda as it moves patients out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Major concerns remain about added traffic and housing demands, permanent and temporary, from the daily addition of 2,500 workers and 1,860 visitors when the move is complete in September 2011, Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson and transportation and public works director Art Holmes said.

Md. 355 cannot handle doubled traffic, said Phil Alperson, who is coordinating the county’s response to project. The county needs to push for special defense access roads funding that a draft environmental impact statement indicates would not be available, Alperson said.

‘‘We already have a traffic nightmare that this would make worse,” Councilman Roger Berliner (D-Dist. 1) of Potomac said, adding that the county cannot afford to and should not have to take on what is the federal government’s responsibility.

In that document, federal officials claim the community would experience ‘‘no long-term effect.” That is an understatement at least, Hanson said.

Without further mitigation, fire and rescue response in the surrounding community will suffer, perhaps becoming slower by 20 percent, county fire chief Thomas W. Carr Jr. told Alperson in a memo last week.

New cable TV option aired

The Council began considering a proposal that could add Cavalier cable television to county residents’ TV screens. Verizon, Comcast and RCN already offer cable services in the county.

Unlike them, Cavalier uses the Internet to transmit video. Praisner said she is concerned about the transmission speed and how the company will explain delays to customers.

County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) endorsed granting a franchise to Cavalier after a public hearing late last year. The council is planning a second public hearing Feb. 5 at 1:30 p.m. at its offices in Rockville.