City's 911 lines flooded with 'foreign' calls

10/30/2007

William Kaempffer , Register Staff

NEW HAVEN — It was a hairy morning in New Haven’s 911 center Monday when operators were inexplicably inundated with non-emergency calls from around the country — 519 in a 44-minute span. The calls, from as far away as Florida, Chicago, Texas and Puerto Rico, were erroneously connected to city emergency operators, and local and state communication authorities were trying to determine what happened.

The 519 calls were almost 20 times the typical call volume, and left operators from the Fire and Police departments scrambling to answer all the calls, Fire Chief Michael Grant said.

"I’m calling people (additional staff) in right now," said police Sgt. Tony Cathey in a brief phone conversation Monday morning.

The best authorities could determine, the problem was related to Colorado-based Level 3, an international communications company that serves Internet-based VoIP phone companies.

For whatever reason, hundreds of personal calls made by Internet phone customers ended up routed to New Haven 911.

"The problem was fixed by AT&T," said George Pohorilak, director of the Office of Statewide Emergency Telecommunications, the state agency that oversees 911 answering points across the state.

"This was not a 911 issue. We don’t know exactly what happened," Pohorilak said.

Communication officials are now trying to determine "what happened, why it happened and how do we stop it from happening again," he said.

A message left at Level 3’s headquarters Monday was not returned.

Typically, New Haven 911 might receive 30 emergency calls an hour, a rate of one every two minutes. Monday morning, they were coming in at one every five seconds.

New Haven Fire Lt. Andrew Campion, who oversees 911, said the system’s redundancies worked as designed. In the event of excessive call volume, unanswered calls roll over to other phone lines in the center where additional staff can answer them, and ultimately to the Hamden 911 center or state police.

"We didn’t miss any calls," said Grant. "The 911 operators reacted deliberately and did a very good job of handling the situation. I tip my hat to them."

AT&T issued a brief statement.

"We were informed by the New Haven PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point) that it was receiving non-emergency calls. An immediate investigation determined the calls stemmed from a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC). To maintain the integrity of the PSAP, AT&T turned down that portion of the network and engaged the CLEC to help fix the issue."

William Kaempffer can be reached at wkaempffer@nhregister.com or 789-5727.