News Detail

Service Restored to 9-1-1 Phone Lines

Emergency Services

January 21, 2021

Service has been restored to 9-1-1 emergency and non-emergency phone lines and all Franklin County Department of Emergency Services call center operations are functional.

“Franklin County has an outstanding network of emergency service providers who stepped in to receive direct calls from residents with emergencies. Fortunately, no serious issues were reported as a result of the outage,” said Commissioner Chairman Dave Keller.

Franklin County Department of Emergency Services received a service disruption notification on Wednesday afternoon announcing multi-county phone outages and stating that calls to 9-1-1 from customers may not connect. The outage lasted approximately 20 hours and was due to an accidentally cut fiber in northern Maryland according to Lumen, the county’s 9-1-1 service provider.

The Department of Emergency Services received around 20 Text to 9-1-1 messages during the time of the outage. 

“We appreciate everyone’s patience during this rare outage. Franklin County Department of Emergency Services, in conjunction with the telephone provider Lumen, will be working on ways to minimize the chance of a future occurrence,” said Jacob Crider, Director of Emergency Management Services.