HALIFAX -- A network issue that affected landlines in Atlantic Canada, and prevented some 911 calls from getting through, has been fixed.
Police across the Maritimes were warning residents Wednesday morning that 911 calls were not getting through due to a technical issue with phone lines.
The RCMP in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Halifax Regional Police, Fredericton Police Force, Saint John Police Force, Miramichi Police Force and Bathurst Police Force were among the departments affected by the outage, which lasted about two hours.
While landline services were down, a backup system in Moncton still managed to re-route 911 calls to the appropriate service. Moncton Fire Chief Conrad Landry says even the backup system has a backup.
"We would have gone to the cell phone system," Landry said. "They have cell phones and satellite cell phones so there were options there in case and we would have advertised that to the public."
Bell Aliant confirmed before 10:30 a.m. that it was "experiencing a network issue impacting wireless and landline voice services for some customers in Atlantic Canada."
A spokesperson for Bell Aliant says a network switch failure in Moncton early Wednesday morning affected wireless and landline calls to varying degrees in the Atlantic provinces, including 911 service in some areas. Our network team is continuing its technical investigation into the outage.
The company said service was restored before 11 a.m.
A number of police departments confirmed that 911 lines are functioning again and say residents can call 911 to report an emergency.
During the outage, police departments had provided alternate phone numbers residents could call to report emergencies. They were urging residents to call those lines to report emergencies only and to refrain from making non-emergency calls.
The New Brunswick RCMP and Halifax Regional Police also requested that an alert be sent out.
A similar incident happened a couple years ago. The Town of Sackville, N.B., developed a system where they disperse firefighters to strategic locations throughout the town and a sentinel message is sent to residents.
"It advises the people of the community that this has happened, the lines aren’t working, if you need services you go to these places and our volunteers will make sure that whatever service you need, whether it’s police, fire, health, ambulance, they will get it for us," said Mayor John Higham.
New Brunswick’s Department of Public Safety says they hope lessons are learned from the incident and that similar situations can be avoided in the future.
