Montgomery County said Wednesday morning that Sprint cellular 911 service had been restored following outages the wireless company said were caused by a fire and power outage in Washington, D.C.
Throughout Tuesday the county sent multiple news alerts to residents warning them that Sprint’s emergency service was not working. In one alert, the county said Sprint customers were receiving a busy signal when attempting to call 911.
Sprint said on its customer service Twitter account the service problems were caused by a fire at a transformer facility in D.C. The Washington Post reported the fire broke out around midnight in electrical equipment below the sidewalk near the intersection of 18th and L streets NW.
A Sprint spokeswoman told the paper the fire happened across the street from a switch site that subsequently lost power after the blaze. A backup generator system didn’t work immediately, but power was restored around 7 p.m. Tuesday night, according to the Post. Similar Sprint 911 outages were reported in Arlington, Price George’s and Prince William counties.
Our service issue in #DC is fully restored. We apologize to our customers and thank them for their patience.
— Sprint Care (@sprintcare) August 17, 2016
