Rick Sobey
Boston Herald
(TNS)
The 911 emergency system was back up and running across the Bay State Tuesday afternoon following a major outage, according to local police and fire departments.
911 was down for about two hours in Massachusetts, according to agencies.
“911 Operating System is back up and running,” Boston Police posted at 3:42 p.m.
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said the State 911 Department had been aware of “a disruption to the 911 system and is investigating the cause.”
The outage came as a dangerous heat wave settles in over Massachusetts and as Boston prepares to host a victory parade for the NBA champion Boston Celtics on Friday. While the system was down, people experiencing an emergency were urged to contact the direct line for their local police department, activate a firebox if one is in service near them, or go to the nearest police or fire station.
The State 911 Department said it would provide more information as it becomes available.
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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu called attention to the outage early Tuesday afternoon at the beginning of her press conference with public safety officials to talk about this week’s extreme heat and Friday’s Celtics parade.
“Never a dull moment,” the mayor said. “And we just wanted to start actually with a notification that currently the statewide 911 system is down and calls are not going through. We’ve been in touch with the state and with all the relevant officials to work on getting this resolved.”
The outage also came up, albeit in an entirely different way, during the Mass. Department of Transportation board meeting taking place Tuesday afternoon.
“Are we getting hit by a tornado? I left my phone on the desk … Hopefully it’s not an alarm for the project,” MassDOT Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver said when his presentation on the Allston multimodal project was interrupted by at least one phone in the MassDOT board room going off with an alert about the 911 outage.
The State 911 Department exists within the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, and is funded through a $1.50-a-month fee on all devices that can access the 911 system, like cellphones.
— Material from State House New Services was used in this report
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