POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Dutchess County’s 911 emergency call system was restored around 9 p.m. Tuesday night after being down for nearly seven hours due to a significant disruption that officials believe may have been caused by a cement mixer truck.
Outage Begins Midday
The outage began just after 2 p.m. on July 15, 2025, when emergency calls placed to 911 began being redirected to alternate call centers located several miles away. Dutchess County Emergency Management quickly launched an investigation and contacted Verizon, the county’s emergency communication provider, to locate and address the issue.
In the meantime, county officials issued a public alert warning residents that 911 voice calls were not going through. However, they reassured the public that emergency text messages sent to 911 were still being received. As a temporary solution, they also published a list of seven-digit emergency phone numbers for residents to use.
Possible Cause: Cement Mixer Strikes Cable
By evening, Verizon technicians discovered that the outage stemmed from damage to fiber optic cables near the Dutchess County 911 Call Center. These cables, which carry emergency call data, had been ripped from several utility poles along East Dorsey Lane—just a few hundred yards from the call center itself.
According to a local resident interviewed by Mid-Hudson News, a cement mixer truck may be responsible for the incident. The neighbor claimed he witnessed the truck snag the cables and continue driving, leaving nearly 300 feet of fiber optic lines torn from their poles. While this account has not yet been verified by authorities, it has become a central point in the ongoing investigation.
Verizon Response and Repairs
Verizon line crews were seen working intensively along East Dorsey Lane to repair the damage. Additional personnel were spotted inspecting a telephone equipment box at the intersection of Creek Road and East Dorsey Lane, located directly next to the county’s 911 center.
By approximately 6 p.m., the damaged cables had been re-hung on the utility poles. Crews then focused on the time-consuming task of splicing 24 individual fiber lines that had been severed. This work allowed the county’s 911 service to be brought back online later that night.
Redundancy System Fails to Prevent Outage
The incident also raised concerns about the county’s backup systems. Dutchess County’s 911 infrastructure is supposed to include redundancy protocols, which are designed to reroute calls around damaged lines automatically. However, Tuesday’s outage revealed that the redundancy system failed to operate as expected.
County officials acknowledged this failure and stated that a separate investigation is now underway to determine why the system’s failover features did not activate and prevent the interruption in service.
Ongoing Investigation
As of Wednesday morning, the official cause of the cable damage remains unconfirmed. Authorities are continuing to investigate whether the cement mixer was directly responsible and if any further infrastructure vulnerabilities exist in the emergency response system.
The incident has raised broader questions about the resilience of Dutchess County’s emergency communication systems and the protocols in place to ensure continuous public access to lifesaving services.
Officials are urging anyone with information about the incident to contact the county emergency management office, as the investigation remains active.
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