UPDATE: Sprint Phone Service 'Back to Normal'

UPDATE Wednesday 8:30 a.m.: Sprint cellular phone service in the region has now returned to normal status after overnight repairs, according to Fairfax County.

But in its announcement released Wednesday morning, the County also warned: "If you receive a busy signal when you call 9-1-1, you should attempt to text to 9-1-1, use a landline phone or use a cellphone covered by another provider."

A Sprint spokeswoman said that 911 service was "fully restored" late Tuesday night. Here's their full statement:

"On Tuesday power outages and a fire near our Washington DC switch site caused our wireline services to be impacted, which in turn impacted 9-1-1 calls for some wireless customers. 9-1-1 service was fully restored at 10:45 pm ET. We continue to work aggressively to fully restore service for our wireline customers. The safety and security of our customers is a top priority and we apologize to our customers."

"The safety and security of our customers is a top priority and we apologize to our customers," Sprint said Wednesday morning.

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Original story

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA -- Sprint cellular service continues to impact 911 service in Northern Virginia Tuesday night and will likely continue through Wednesday, according to Fairfax County.

Full cellular service for Sprint customers may return by Wednesday evening, Fairfax County said in an alert sent out late Tuesday night at 9 p.m.

If you receive a busy signal when you call 9-1-1, you should attempt to text to 9-1-1, use a landline phone or use a cellphone covered by another provider, Fairfax County advised.

"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," said Adrienne Norton, a spokeswoman for the company, in an email to Patch. "We are working aggressively to restore power and full services, and we apologize for the inconvenience to our customers."

Norton said late Tuesday that Sprint's DC switch site lost power and a backup generator failed at the site. Restoration of service is still underway, she said in an email Tuesday night, at 8:30 p.m.

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

The problems with Sprint's service are widespread and stretch to the entire D.C. region, although DC proper reports that 911 calls using Sprint in DC are coming through.

Montgomery, Md. County Council member Roger Berliner told the Montgomery County Sentinel that "... clearly, we’re going to need to call these people [Sprint] in so we can have an understanding as to what happened and why and it’s just… what can you say? As one of my colleagues said, this is people’s worst nightmare.”

Berliner serves as the chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

The 911 center in Fairfax County is the largest in the Commonwealth and among the top 10 nationwide. The call center gets about a million calls annually.

Fairfax County weighed in on problems with Verizon 911 service that went out in 2012 during a derecho storm that hit the area. Read comments here from Fairfax County to the FCC about that outage. Throughout the comments, the County discusses the importance of the cell company's backup power sources and the need for the company to give prompt notice to the county if the cell phone company's system fails.

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