We take some things for granted.

Turn a faucet, and water will pour out.

Flip a switch, and lights will come on.

Those can be interrupted by circumstances. Don’t pay a bill, and the water or electricity can be cut off.

But there are some services we rely on so much that we really can’t imagine them not being there when we need them. Perhaps the service we depend upon the most is 911.

On Friday, Pennsylvania’s 911 system began experiencing what was termed “intermittent outages.”

They were reported to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency around 2 p.m. Around 3:25 p.m., a statewide alert went out, with cellphones everywhere blaring an alarm.

The alerts provided an alternative.

People were urged to use their counties’ nonemergency numbers. PEMA began immediate efforts to rectify the problem.

By midnight, the system was working again.

The response is to be commended. The 911 system is a vast and complicated network. On one hand, 10 hours to fix the problem when an electrical or cable outage can take days to correct is a good

outcome.

On the other hand, Pennsylvania receives

14.5 million 911 calls annually.

That breaks down to almost 40,000 per day. Over a 10-hour period, that’s more than 16,000 calls.

Allegheny County gets about 5,000 calls a day. In 10 hours, that’s around 2,000 calls. Westmoreland County gets about 900 calls a day, which would break down to a little under 400 calls during a 10-hour period.

That’s a lot of cries for help. The numbers alone speak to the critical importance of the service. And while the back- up of the county nonemergency numbers was a lifeline, we do not know how many people did not find help because of the outage.

The outage is not believed to be related to a cyberattack. That’s good. The cause is still being researched — as it should be.

“A full root cause analysis is underway and will take several days to complete,” said Jeff Robertson of state contractor Comtech Telecommunications in a statement.

Answers are important not just for functionality but also for faith.

People have been trained to reach out for the ease of three simple digits when they are too panicked to remember anything else. Emergency systems on cellphones can call 911 automatically. A child doesn’t know how to look up that county number but can still have a critical need to call for help.

The 911 system is necessary every hour of every day. We take it for granted.

While that can be a bad thing, in this instance, it’s an expression of trust that should be maintained.

— Pittsburgh Tribune-Review