Pennsylvania 911 Failure Traced to Human Error; Baby Death Unexplained

An outage that caused Allegheny County's 911 service to miss at least 100 calls one day last month was caused by a technician's error, according to the county's emergency management director.
Meanwhile, the death of a baby whose family said they couldn't get through to 911 that night has been ruled natural, sudden and unexplained by the county medical examiner.
Emergency Management Director Bob Full told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that a service technician made a mistake months ago and failed to reactivate a default switch, leading the call center to miss dozens of calls on Oct. 26.
The investigation also shows about 69 calls were missed, Full said. Originally, the estimated number of missed calls was much higher.
On the night of the 911 failure, a Stowe Township family said their 5-month-old, Alijah Schaffer, wouldn't wake up, and they were unable to reach emergency operators. Police ended up driving the family to a hospital but the baby died.
Since that time, investigators had been trying to figure out if the 911 system played a part in the case.
No county officials have been available to discuss the case on Friday because it is the holiday observance of Veterans Day.

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