Alexandria warns residents of 911 disruptions amid nationwide Verizon outage
City urges customers to use landlines, other carriers or visit emergency facilities in person
A widespread Verizon Wireless outage left customers nationwide without voice, text and data service Wednesday afternoon, prompting Alexandria officials to warn residents that their ability to call 911 may be compromised.
The City of Alexandria issued an alert Wednesday confirming it is monitoring the situation as Verizon acknowledged the problem and said its engineering teams are working to restore service. The company has not provided a timeline for full restoration or identified the cause.
Downdetector, a website that tracks user-submitted outage reports, told CNN that more than 1 million issue reports related to the outage have been generated within the last 24 hours. At its peak, more than 178,000 reports were filed within a 15-minute window.
The disruption began around noon Eastern time and persisted for hours. Affected phones displayed “SOS” in place of normal signal bars. Among user reports, 59% cited mobile phone failure while 34% mentioned loss of signal, according to Downdetector’s analysis.
Major U.S. cities were hit hardest, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, D.C. Downdetector data indicated New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston and Dallas were particularly impacted.
Alexandria residents experiencing service disruptions who need emergency assistance should use a landline telephone, borrow a phone from someone with a different wireless carrier, use Wi-Fi calling if their device supports it, or use satellite service if available. Those using satellite features should not hang up until speaking with a dispatcher.
Residents may also visit any Alexandria fire station or police headquarters in person to report an emergency:
Alexandria Police Department
Headquarters: 3600 Wheeler Ave.
Alexandria Fire Stations
Station 201: 317 Prince St. (Old Town)
Station 202: 213 E. Windsor Ave. (Del Ray)
Station 204: 900 Second St. (headquarters)
Station 205: 1210 Cameron St. (Rosemont)
Station 206: 4609 Seminary Rd.
Station 207: 3301 Duke St.
Station 208: 175 N. Paxton St. (Landmark)
Station 209: 2800 Main Line Blvd. (Potomac Yards)
Station 210: 5255 Eisenhower Ave.
In Washington, D.C., the District’s official emergency notification system sent out a message to residents advising those with emergencies to go to a police district or fire station if they cannot connect.
The outage is one of several high-profile tech disruptions in the past year, including an Amazon Web Services issue that took down much of the web in October. Verizon experienced similar widespread service interruptions in August 2025 and October 2024. A 2024 AT&T outage prompted a Federal Communications Commission investigation.
Residents can monitor alexandriava.gov and follow @AlexandriaVAGov on social media for updates. Emergency alert signups are available at alexandriava.gov/eNews.