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Montgomery County's 911 system outage investigated following 2 deaths

Posted at 2:16 PM, Jul 12, 2016
and last updated 2016-07-12 18:20:14-04
Montgomery County officials plan to investigate why the 911 system failed for two hours, during which time two people died.
          
Officials said in a statement Monday that the 911 system was out from about 11:10 p.m. Sunday and 1:10 a.m. Monday. Callers received only a busy signal.
          
During the outage, crews responded to two medical emergency calls, involving fatalities that included a 91-year-old Olney woman and 40-year-old Marlon Somarriba from Rockville. It's unclear if the outage was involved.
          
Somarriba's family members tell WRC-TV that they dialed 911 repeatedly for over an hour before finally calling the Rockville police directly. An ambulance was then dispatched.
          
County Executive Ike Leggett says he's calling for an immediate investigation into the outage.
          
County chief spokesman Patrick Lacefield says the 911 outage was traced to a malfunctioning heating, ventilation and air conditioning system that caused both the main power system and backup system to shut down.
 

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