Sprint Restores 911 Service in DC After Day-Long Outage

WASHINGTON, DC — Sprint restored 911 service late Tuesday in D.C. and other affected areas in the region after what they say was an underground transformer fire in the District knocked out service for most of the day.

"9-1-1 service in #DC is fully restored," wrote Sprint's official Twitter account. "We continue working to restore all service for our wireline customers. Thank you for your patience."

An alert sent out at about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday by Fairfax County -- and later by other areas in the D.C. region -- stated that Sprint users may receive a busy signal if they try to call 911, and therefore they should try to text 911 instead or use either a landline phone or a cell phone from another provider.

In an email to Patch.com, a Sprint spokesperson wrote: "Due to an extensive commercial power outage and fire, some Sprint wireline customers in the Metro DC Area are unable to access voice and data service. We are working aggressively to restore power and full services, and we apologize for the inconvenience to our customers."

Representatives from both Dominion Power in Northern Virginia and Pepco in Washington, D.C. say they are not aware of any power outages that caused the Sprint problems or anyone with Sprint getting in touch with their companies about the problem.

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