The 411 on 911

From Sally Hand:

Sunday evening I received and email saying that 911 services had been restored. This worried me a bit since I had never received any notice that the 911 system had been down. Today in the Washington Post, I read that the service was down for 3 hours and the police where not aware because no one had called the police to say that the 911 service was not working. What is wrong here – I can't call 911 because it is down, yet I need to call 911 to tell them the system is down?

We live in a world of computers – it is easy to set up a program that will alert the police that 911 is not working – no one should need to call. This is the second time in three months that the 911 system has gone down. Who is in charge of making it work? As the center of our civil defense system the 911 system should be one of the highest priorities. This system is surely needed daily for fires and accidents, but what if a terrorist decided to set off a bomb or a crazy sniper rears his head again? President Bush keeps telling us we are at war; local officials aren't acting like they have anything to worry about. Homeland Security – please send MoCo money to get a 911 system that really works. We don't need wire tapping – we need infrastructure.