The independent board that oversees 911 answering services expects to have a report soon on a glitch that occurred last week.
Tyler Morse, IT manager for the Enhanced 911 Board, said he expects to have a report soon on the so-called phantom calls that interrupted the 911 system for a little under an hour on Thursday.
Morse said the issue was based on a system anomaly in which one person would call 911, and almost immediately, several “ghosts” of that phone call would appear in the system for different workers who were waiting to take calls. He does not believe the issue is the result of an external attack.
The issue started just before 11 a.m. Thursday and continued for less than an hour, according to a statement from the board. No calls from people with actual emergencies were missed, a statement said.
Eight callers didn’t get through to a person answering the phones, Morse said. The board’s original estimate was 15 callers, but the staff narrowed the number down by calling the people back, he said.
Intrado Inc. of Longmont, Colorado, the provider of 911 services in Vermont through July, is conducting a root-cause investigation on the artificial spike in phone calls.
Morse said Vermonters should not worry about the functionality of the 911 system based on Thursday’s incident.
