The statewide interruption of the Massachusetts 911 system has ended, officials with the state's Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said. “The Massachusetts 911 system has been restored,” the agency announced on social media. “The public can now resume calling 911 for emergency situations.” “The State 911 Department continues to investigate the cause of the interruption,” EOPSS said. “We will provide more information when it is available.” Earlier in the day, emergency dispatchers across Massachusetts were disrupted by a “major,” statewide interruption. Due to the interruption, state officials turned on emergency alerts on cellphones around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. “Calls are not going through,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said of the 911 system. “We are in contact with the state and all relevant authorities to resolve this issue.” Within the city of Boston, emergency officials said internal communications are functioning normally and each department is able to contact partner agencies needed for appropriate responses. “We share the same (computer-aided dispatch) system, which is working fine,” Boston EMS Commissioner James Hooley said. “Any information entered by any agency, where someone contacts fire, police or EMS and we need the service of another agency, we send messages to each other, we talk on the radio and we help each other.” The Brockton Fire Department also referenced the outage in a statement posted on social media Tuesday. That department, like Boston, urged residents to use fire alarm boxes or contact the fire or police departments directly in an emergency. Brookline officials asked residents not to call 911 to “test” the system. “When you dial 911 we receive a location and the number that called, but we are unable to communicate. Dispatch is attempting to call all numbers that call 911 by calling back to the business line. Please do not call 911 to test this as it takes time to call back other callers,” Brookline said in a warning to the community. Fire boxes in Boston are essentially telegraphs that send signals in Morse code when triggered. They do not use the telephone system. Several years ago, Massachusetts suffered sporadic 911 outages. At the time, it was blamed on an outage at Louisiana-based CenturyLink, which affected some Verizon customers.
A statewide outage of the Massachusetts 911 system has ended, officials with the state's Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said.
“The Massachusetts 911 system has been restored,” the agency announced on social media. “People can now resume calling 911 for emergencies.”
“The state 911 department is continuing to investigate the cause of the disruption,” EOPSS said. “We will provide more information when it becomes available.”
Earlier in the day, emergency dispatchers in Massachusetts were disrupted by a “major” statewide outage.
Due to the power supply disruption, state authorities issued an emergency alert on mobile phones at around 2:30 pm on Tuesday.
“Calls are not getting through,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said of the 911 system. “We are in contact with the state and all relevant authorities to try to resolve this issue.”
Emergency officials in the city of Boston said internal communications were functioning normally and each department was able to contact partner agencies as needed for an appropriate response.
“We share the same (computer-aided dispatch) system, which is working fine,” said Boston EMS Commissioner James Hooley. “Any information entered by any agency, where someone contacts fire, police or EMS and we need the service of another agency, we send messages to each other, we talk on the radio and we help each other.”
The Brockton Fire Department also referenced the outage in a statement posted on social media Tuesday. Like Boston, that department urged residents to use fire alarm boxes or contact the fire or police departments directly in case of an emergency.
Brookline officials asked residents not to call 911 to “test” the system.
“When you dial 911 we receive a location and the number that called, but we are unable to communicate. Dispatch is attempting to call back all numbers that call 911 by calling back the business line. Please do not call 911 to test this as it takes time to call back other callers,” Brookline said in a warning to the community.
The fire boxes in Boston are essentially telegraphs that send signals in Morse code when turned on. They do not use the telephone system.
Several years ago, irregularities in 911 service were observed in Massachusetts. At the time, it was blamed on a service disruption by Louisiana-based CenturyLink, which affected some Verizon customers.