Communication lacking on 911 outage, says Green MLA

The Prince Edward Island government needs to do a better job of letting Islanders know what's going on than it did when there were problems with the 911 service Monday, says Green MLA Lynne Lund.

Access to 911 through landlines was down for several hours Monday, from about 6 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

Interim Emergency Measures Organization (EMO) coordinator Tanya Mullally said it was just after 8 a.m. when she was informed, and a news release, along with messages on social media, were sent out about half an hour later.

P.E.I.'s response differed from what was done in Nova Scotia, where a message was sent to all cellphones using the Alert Ready system, and a news conference was held to answer questions.

Just using social media, said Lund, was not enough.

"Very few people are on social media constantly. Anyone who was at work would not have seen this communication, lots of seniors would not have seen this communication, anyone getting groceries probably didn't see it," she said.

"We're missing huge swaths of the population."

Within minutes of hearing of the outage, said Mullally, she was meeting with police and fire chiefs to determine what the best course of action was.

"We did have a conversation. We said, 'Is this an Alert-Ready issue?' and based on the conversation, with the information that our 911 coordinator had, we decided at that time that it wasn't necessary," she said.

911 calls were actually coming in on cellphones, and that was part of what went into the decision, said Mullally.

"We had some confidence with that, as well, that that mechanism was working," she said.

Response will be reviewed

Lund would have liked to have seen the P.E.I. government respond more like the Nova Scotia government did.

"In an emergency when people are panicking, calling 911 and getting nowhere is not acceptable," she said.

"The Nova Scotia government came out quickly. They had a big press conference. They spoke about how important this was. They made sure people were informed and they were prepared to answer questions."

P.E.I. has specific criteria in place when using the Alert Ready system, said Mullally, and this outage didn't fit them.

"I'd hate to say that we would do it differently. I think we made the right decision based on the information that we had at the time," she said.

"Next time, if it happens again, we might have different information and we might make different decisions. So we always make that decision based on what we have and that's the best we can do with that."

She noted New Brunswick also chose not to use Alert Ready. Mullally said she and others at EMO will be reviewing the event, including consulting with colleagues in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick about why they made their decision, and possibly revising Alert Ready protocols as a result.