60 minutes to report outages to CA OES
October 2, 2019
California 911 Outage Reporting Bill
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law Senate Bill 670 and Senate Bill 560, which regulate communications during 911 outages and public power shut offs (Vol. XVI, Issue 27). SB 670 requires telecommunications service providers that offer access to 911 service to notify the Office of Emergency Services (OES) within 60 minutes of discovering a community isolation outage that limits the provider's customers' ability to make 911 calls or receive emergency notifications. It also makes the OES responsible for notifying any applicable county office of emergency service and the sheriff of any county affected by the outage. SB 560 requires that emergency departments, health care facilities, and telecommunication providers receive prior notification of de-energizing events when their facilities will be impacted by a planned power shutdown. For more information, please contact Wes Wright (wright@khlaw.com; 202.434.4239).