Virginia State Commission Fixes on Verizon’s Power Failures in Interim Derecho Report

The report outlined the failure of multiple 911 centers and firmly blamed Verizon for the problems, which arose from poor maintenance of backup power. The report included new details of the failure. “A review of the maintenance logs for the backup generators in Arlington and Fairfax central offices shows a lack of compliance with Verizon’s maintenance and testing procedures,” the report said. “The generator that failed to start in the Arlington office did not start during routine testing conducted two days before the June 29 Derecho. The maintenance log indicated that work to the generator was needed.” Nine Verizon generators out of 136 failed during the Mid-Atlantic storms, the commission said. It said battery reserves depleted within three to five hours.

Verizon also bungled the follow-up and didn’t activate its emergency Area Control Center in Maryland until 10 a.m. the morning after the storm, the Virginia commission said. Four 911 centers in northern Virginia lost 911 service for a long time, but 21 other 911 centers were “impacted and experienced such problems as the failure of Verizon to deliver Automatic Location Information ('ALI') and the loss of administrative and backup telephone lines,” it said. Primary ALI links weren’t back until five days after the storm, it said. Verizon told members of the House Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee it’s reviewing all its power facilities first in the Mid-Atlantic region and then throughout the country and sees a need for better communications between the telco and municipalities during emergencies (CD Sept 13 p1).

"As the SCC staff notes, Verizon has taken quick action to resolve these issues, and that effort continues,” said Verizon Mid-Atlantic Vice President Anthony Lewis in a statement Friday. “We have corrected the problems that caused generator failures in our Arlington and Fairfax offices and have made solid progress on a number of fronts.” Such progress includes “conducting back-up power system audits of all critical Verizon 911 facilities in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.,” expected to be completed by the end of October, and “beefing up procedures to identify power issues and manually start back-up generators in the event they don’t start automatically,” he said. Verizon is improving testing procedures and “accelerating and enhancing” the different alerts and mobilization efforts necessary for such disasters as the derecho, which involve backup power, Lewis said. The telco first released an extensive report on its failures in mid-August (CD Aug 15 p1).

Verizon “did not always provide sufficient, accurate, or timely communication to the affected” 911 centers, the SCC report said. It expressed concern about Verizon follow-up, which hasn’t always defined the timeline or definition of its proposed remedies, it said. The SCC outlined several issues that warrant further attention and will release a final report on the derecho outages in December, it said.

"By the end of this month, we will have completed four of the five recommendations made by northern Virginia 911 center directors -- including an electronic notification system that will provide information on situations that may affect 911 services or other Verizon issues to key 911 center personnel via voice, email and text,” Lewis said. He said the telco will have “an on-site presence at the Virginia Emergency Operations Center in Richmond upon request of the commonwealth’s Department of Emergency Management.”