Follow-Up: Oakland 911 Dispatch Restored After Two-Day Disruption
OAKLAND, California — In Oakland, Alameda County, police and fire dispatch returned to normal on Friday morning, October 23, ending a 911 communications disruption that began Wednesday night. The outage was caused by damage to AT&T fiber-optic cables that knocked out the city's computer-aided dispatch system.
The failure began at about 8:30 p.m. on October 21, when Oakland police dispatchers found the computer-aided dispatch system frozen with error messages, and phone, internet and dispatch services went down. About 75 minutes later, at 9:45 p.m., 911 calls began being routed to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office dispatch center, with Oakland's fire dispatch center also helping. Oakland police dispatchers worked from the fire dispatch center and the sheriff's dispatch center, and during the outage police responded only to top-priority "Priority 1" calls.
Police Chief James Beere said at a Thursday news conference that two of the department's backup plans were also compromised during the outage, and that a disruption of this scale was highly unusual. City IT staff worked with AT&T on repairs: the computer-aided dispatch system and internet service came back Thursday evening, but telephone repairs were not completed until Friday morning. AT&T said a fiber-optic cable had been cut and that the company did not believe the damage was caused by theft or vandalism.
The disruption also affected the OAK311 non-emergency line. Police said infrastructure emergencies such as flooding or downed power lines should still be reported by calling 911 as normal, while non-emergency matters such as potholes or illegal dumping can be emailed to [email protected].
Related: Oakland 911 Dispatch Failure: Emergency Calls Routed to Alameda County Sheriff's Office
Source: GSM·America
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：奥克兰市天际线与海湾大桥夜景。摄影：Basil D Soufi，CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Oakland skyline and the Bay Bridge at night, by Basil D Soufi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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