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Authorities said Wednesday that because of the quick responses by dispatch centers, there were no reports of emergencies that were not addressed.
But the two-hour disruption on Tuesday — the second breakdown of the state’s 911 system in less than three months — raised questions and safety concerns about the reliability of the system, and whether dispatch centers could have handled a longer disruption.
“It shouldn’t be that a necessary and routine security measure like a firewall brings down the 911 system. It’s insane,” said Harold Feld, a senior vice president of telecommunications policy at the advocacy group Public Knowledge who studies 911 systems.
Hastings, the WestComm Regional Dispatch director, said she was thankful “the safeguards worked.”
She said the center received about 200 calls during the disruption, many of which were people who’d heard about the outage and were testing the system. Though the phones were down, the phone numbers popped up in a log and dispatchers were able to call them back.
“We had several calls that were actual emergencies,” Hastings said: police calls, ambulance dispatches, fire alarms.
In Cambridge, emergency dispatchers continued receiving calls during the outage via the police and fire department’s business phone numbers, said Robert Goulston, a spokesperson for the Cambridge Police Department.
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Goulston said the city’s Emergency Communications Department received 911 calls during the outage “but they could not communicate to [the] caller so they were quickly calling back on the number being called from on another line.”
State officials said Wednesday the exact cause of the problem remained under review, as they vowed that the private contractor that runs the 911 system would find “a technical solution to ensure that this does not happen again.”
The state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, which oversees the 911 system, did not respond to follow-up questions about its oversight of the crucial apparatus.
Seattle-based Comtech Telecommunications has operated the state’s 911 system since 2019, and the company touted in a press release in May that it had implemented an internet-based “Next Generation 911″ system to replace he previous analog system. Massachusetts is one of about a dozen states that has the new technology.
Comtech said in the May press release that a new contract with the state “could potentially exceed $250 million” if the state picks up an option through 2034.
The company did not return requests for comment.
Feld said that technology for 911 systems has grown and evolved, but that improvements could also backfire, where some systems can overrun each other. He called for greater oversight of the system by state regulators.
“There has to be somebody who is ultimately responsible and there has to be someone in charge of knowing how all of this works and fits together,” he said.
John Chiaramonte, president of consulting services for Mission Critical Partners, told the Globe that he audited Boston’s 911 system two years ago, and said the state has “a strong 911 system.” However, he said the cause of the failure is strange because the Next Generation 911 system has design characteristics that should have prevented the firewall error.
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Governor Maura Healey told reporters Wednesday she is not “suggesting fault, at all” on the part of the vendor, noting that the firewall system in place was “actually too protective.”
“For me, it’s about finding out what happened, getting the answers, making sure it never happens again,” she said after an unrelated event outside the State House. “We’re going to make sure that the vendor and the equipment and the software is where it needs to be in order to ensure the safety and well-being of our residents.”
The state oversees the 911 system and provides technical support and infrastructure to the 204 local and regional dispatch centers around Massachusetts.
“The Massachusetts State 911 Department is deeply committed to providing reliable, state-of-the-art 911 services to all Massachusetts residents and visitors in an emergency. The Department will take all necessary steps to prevent a future occurrence,” said Frank Pozniak, its executive director. “We are grateful to everyone for their patience and cooperation during the outage.”
The type of interruption that occurred on Tuesday is known as a “sunny-day” outage, and they often occur because of physical infrastructure issues.
Massachusetts experienced a similar though smaller-scale outage in April when portions of the 911 system broke down due to a network issue, leaving about 50 call centers without service, according to MassLive.
Disruptions to 911 systems in other states are often due to accidents that physically damage parts of the system. In April, for instance, a company that was installing a light pole temporarily knocked out telecommunications service, affecting the 911 system in parts of Nebraska, Nevada, and Texas, and the entire state of South Dakota.
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But the outage in Massachusetts on Tuesday, which came as temperatures soared into the 90s amid a sweltering mid-week heat wave, seemed to be a network issue, raising questions about the reliability of the system.
“Why is Massachusetts falling behind?” said Tom McKeever, president of the SEIU 888 union that represents more than 500 dispatchers and call takers statewide, including in Boston. “If there’s a problem with our infrastructure, we need to put more emphasis into making sure it’s right.”
As the outage was taking place, he began hearing from the union members in real time as “all hell broke loose,” he said Wednesday.
“Our members thought we were under attack,” he said. Making sure the state prevents these kinds of outages, he said, is “absolutely paramount.”
Matt Stout and Hiawatha Bray of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter. Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.
