Credit: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
After an outage lasting nearly 12 hours, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) announced that 911 services have been restored in Pennsylvania.
PEMA officials have announced that an investigation into what caused intermittent outages will continue, and they will provide updates on as soon as possible.
On July 11, a statewide outage affected Pennsylvania's Next-Generation 911 (NG911) system, beginning around 2 p.m. The issue was first noticed in Delaware County, where emergency call centers reported failures and missing critical data like caller location and phone numbers. By approximately 3:30 p.m., PEMA confirmed that the outage was affecting 911 systems across the state. Emergency alerts were sent out advising residents to only call 911 in true emergencies and to use county-specific non-emergency numbers if calls did not go through.
During a press briefing later that afternoon, PEMA officials described the outage as sporadic and intermittent, noting that while most calls were still getting through, some lacked essential information. They ruled out a cyberattack or recent system update as causes, instead suggesting a possible software glitch, hardware malfunction, or network failure involving a third-party vendor. County emergency operations centers adapted by rerouting calls and activating backup lines to maintain services.
Restoration efforts began almost immediately. PEMA worked closely with technical teams, county 911 centers, and the NG911 provider to diagnose the issue and begin phased restoration. By 6:30 p.m., systems were gradually coming back online, and counties were running tests to confirm functionality.
The entire incident lasted about 10 hours. Authorities continue to investigate the root cause to prevent future disruptions, but in the meantime, normal 911 services have resumed across Pennsylvania.
