AUGUSTA – A legislative panel questioned FairPoint Communications officials Tuesday about several failures of the 911 emergency phone dispatch system across the state in recent weeks.

“The concern is that we want – when someone calls 911 – they get an answer,” said Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, co-chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee. “There have been several times – in Cumberland County, in Penobscot County – when that has not happened.”

The panel cited several instances in which Mainers have dialed 911 in different areas of the state and gotten no answer at all. The lawmakers told company officials the situation is unacceptable and peppered them with questions about equipment used by the system and procedures established to handle any problems.

Rep. Dawn Hill, D-York, questioned whether further equipment upgrades are needed and was assured they are not. She also asked if additional procedures need to be developed, and again was told no.

“We don’t want to see this happen again,” she said.

Rep. Richard Sykes, R-Harrison, the ranking GOP member of the committee, said he plans to visit a dispatch center and see the procedures that are used when there is an equipment failure.

“I guess with all that has happened, I need to see for myself,” he said.

FairPoint Vice President Jeff Allen rankled several lawmakers when he called the multiple incidents in a month’s time an “event.” For example, seven separate times that callers got no answer when calling 911 in Cumberland County were listed as one “event” by the company.

“If someone is in a dire emergency, their spouse is lying on the floor, and they are calling 911,” Diamond said, “I am not sure an event is the proper terminology with seven failures running from nine minutes to 63 minutes in a month.”

Gorham Fire Chief Robert Lefebvre, who chairs the board that oversees the Cumberland County dispatch center, said the system failed when a computer did not switch calls to the backup center operated by the state when the dispatch center could not receive calls.

“If you had pressed 911 to call the Cumberland County Communications Center, you would have got nothing,” he said. “I don’t call that a small event. To me it is a total failure of the system.”

In response, Allen said, “Certainly my intent was not to minimize the impact and importance of these items that took place.”

Rep. Gary Plummer, R-Windham, asked why there have been several failures in the last few months – at the same time FairPoint was taking over the land-line operations of Verizon in the state.

“One incident maybe a coincidence, but we have seen several and not just in one part of the state,” he said.

Allen said the failures that occurred would have happened if Verizon had still been the primary phone company in the state. He said FairPoint has replaced equipment that failed and implemented additional procedures and lines to minimize the length of any future failures.

But, he said, there will always be equipment failures, such as when an accident topples a telephone pole or a computer malfunctions and the system may not work for a few minutes.

“There will be instances when there is equipment that has trouble,” he said. “What I am supremely confident in is that the system will work and when people call E-911, they will get a trained person on the other end to answer the call.”

The panel also questioned Al Gervenack, director of the Emergency Services Communications Bureau at the Public Utilities Commission, about the steps that have been taken to minimize disruptions. He said he believes FairPoint has taken the steps needed to improve the system, but added that problems can always occur.

“There are some levels of failures routinely,” he said. “Equipment does break.”

Gervenack said there are backup centers to the dispatch centers in the state and that the Department of Public Safety dispatch center in Augusta is the backup to the backup centers. But he noted that even with all the safeguards, there could be an equipment failure or human error resulting in calls going unanswered.