Pennsylvania's 911 system is experiencing intermittent outages, including dropped calls, across the commonwealth, officials said Friday.
Outages were first noted about 2 p.m. by Delaware County Emergency Services, the county's 911 call center, and soon spread to other parts of the state, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Director Randy Padfield said at a news conference Friday evening.
"It's been an intermittent and sporadic issue," he said, cautioning not to call it an outage.
He said the issue had not been identified but involved incomplete calls carried by the state's Next Generation 911 network as reported by the state's third-party 911 service provider.
"From what we're seeing the calls are going through," Padfield said, "with intermittent challenges."
Those also include dropped calls, calls for which the origin number is unknown, and ones where the location of the caller is not clear, he said.
Those in need of emergency services should call 911 but also be prepared to call nonemergency lines in their counties, he said.
Next Generation 911 is based on the internet and designed to route calls around problems.
The outages came after the push of a software update for the state's system, Padfield said, but so far, the push doesn't appear to be the culprit.
"This is an anomaly for us," he said.
PEMA sent an Emergency Alert System text Friday afternoon to warn cellphone users that 911 was hit-or-miss, he said.
The agency said on social media that it was "working with technical experts to resolve the issue and restore service as quickly as possible."
It also advised residents to call 911 only for true emergencies and "not call just to check whether it is working."
Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a statement that his office is aware of the problem and working to help restore service as quickly as possible.
"In the meantime — stay calm, follow the directions of PEMA and local authorities, and do not call 911 for any reason other than an emergency," the governor said, echoing PEMA's concern over test calls.
Multiple regions, including York and Montgomery counties, acknowledged the 911 issue in posts on social media, with York County saying there "may be a delay" in emergency calls being answered.
The Philadelphia Police Department said in a statement on Facebook that the "issue may impact the ability of some residents to reach emergency service."
"We urge the public to continue attempting to call 911 in the event of an emergency, as some calls are still successfully going through," the department said.
NBC Philadelphia published a list of nonemergency lines residents can use if they need help urgently and 911 isn't functioning, including district-by-district Philadelphia police lines and county numbers throughout the region.
Multiple counties in Florida experienced 911 outages on Tuesday after a construction crew in the Groveland area cut a fiber line, NBC affiliate WESH of Daytona Beach and the Orlando area reported.
NENA (National Emergency Number Association), an organization representing emergency communications professionals, said in June that its 2025 survey of 1,379 public safety professionals found nearly 9 in 10 emergency communications centers across the country experienced a 911 outage in the last year.
