Karmactive Staff
The 911 emergency system across Pennsylvania is working again after experiencing widespread failures throughout Friday. The problems, which started around 2:00 PM on July 11, 2025, began in Delaware County before quickly spreading statewide.
PEMA (Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency) announced early Saturday that services were fully restored just before midnight. Officials continue to investigate what caused the problems.
“At this time, 911 services have been restored in Pennsylvania,” PEMA stated on social media. “We worked with counties to fully test that the system is operational.”
During the outage, emergency calls sometimes failed to connect or lacked crucial information like caller location and phone number. This made it harder for emergency teams to quickly find people who needed help.
Randy Padfield, PEMA Director, explained that most calls were still getting through despite the issues. “This is not a full outage, but an intermittent issue impacting the Next Generation 911 network. Some calls are going through normally, while others are missing vital information like location coordinates or callback numbers.”
The problems affected Pennsylvania’s Next Generation 911 system, which uses internet technology instead of traditional phone lines. Officials have ruled out a cyberattack or recent software update as causes. They’re now looking at whether a software glitch, hardware failure, or issue with the third-party provider might be responsible.
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When the problems started, state officials quickly sent an emergency alert to cell phones across Pennsylvania at about 3:27 PM. The message told residents to use county non-emergency numbers if they couldn’t connect through 911.
Governor Josh Shapiro addressed the public during the crisis: “We are on top of the issue and working to restore full service as quickly as possible. In the meantime — stay calm, follow the directions of PEMA and local authorities.”
Some counties recovered faster than others. Allegheny County announced normal operations by 5:00 PM, just two hours after problems began. Other counties took longer to restore service.
Bob Stout, who manages Dauphin County’s 911 center, was surprised by the disruption. “In my time here, we’ve never had any issues. This is shocking,” he said. His center typically handles about 400 emergency calls every day with 12 dispatchers working.
During the outage, officials warned people not to test the system by making non-emergency calls. Padfield explained that these test calls create extra work for dispatchers who must investigate each dropped connection.
While Padfield described this incident as an “anomaly,” similar outages have happened in other states before. The situation highlights how important backup systems are for emergency services. For Pennsylvania residents, this experience serves as a reminder to know alternative emergency contact numbers. PEMA continues investigating the root cause to prevent similar problems in the future.
