Cellphone outage causes safety challenges for central Ohio fire department

Anna Hoffman
·2 min read
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Thursday, many central Ohioans’ day started on a frustrating note with a nationwide cell service outage impacting day-to-day life.

AT&T, which had the largest outage, said all service has now been restored as of Thursday afternoon. But this issue caused problems for customers of multiple networks including Cricket Wireless, Verizon and T-Mobile since the overnight hours.

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The Federal Communications Commission is investigating what caused the problem. But this caused more than an inconvenience for the Upper Arlington Fire Division.

“We had an issue at one of our buildings that the city owns where we were notified that the fire alarm was offline. And what that means is it was no longer communicating with the call center,” said Assistant Fire Chief Mike Bell.

Bell said this problem was impacting several city buildings and commercial businesses. This means if there was a fire, they would not be notified right away.

“It could cause a significant delay in getting our fire apparatus there to deal with whatever problem you have. And this could go with any not just fire alarms, but there’s medical alarms. There’s, you know, AED alarms and things like that that also bring ambulances and police,” Bell said.

Bell said the problem was on and off throughout the day. His best advice, if you experience an outage, call 911 directly if there is an emergency. Bell said if your cell phone is not working to try a landline.

Many central Ohioans said they noticed something was wrong with their cell phones right away.

“I was on the phone, my friend last night around like three in the morning and then randomly our call hung up. So we text each other and we’re like, what just happened,” said Kelsey Cripe.

AT&T did release a statement saying they are taking steps to make sure this does not happen again.

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