Massachusetts’s 911 system was down all over the state for more than an hour on Tuesday afternoon.
At 3:49 p.m., almost two hours after the outage started, state officials told the public that the problem had been fixed and that the 911 system was back up and running.
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security wrote on X that the state is still looking into what went wrong.
People in Boston were told by the police, “If you are having an emergency, please pull a firebox.”
If people in Boston needed help, they were told to call their local police stations, use the fireboxes, or walk up to an officer. During the shutdown, police were patrolling the city with blue lights on “for high visibility.”
What went wrong with the system is not clear.
Police in Worcester, Malden, and Medford also told people that the 911 system is down and that they should use administrative lines to call the police instead.
During a news gathering about the Boston Celtics’ NBA title win, Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston brought up the problem.
“Calls aren’t getting through. Wu said, “We’ve been in touch with the state and all the right people to work on getting this fixed.” “The phone numbers for all of the district stations can be found on the police website in several places. They will also be posted on social media.”
Michael Cox, the commissioner of police in Boston, said it wasn’t clear how long the power loss would last.
He said, “This could only last for a short time.” “We’re still waiting to hear how long it will last, but we thought it was important to let people know what’s going on with the 911 system, especially since it’s going to be hot soon.”
Some people in Connecticut, New York, and Maine got the same wireless emergency message that said 911 was down when it wasn’t supposed to. Officials from all three states made it clear that the alert was only for people living in Massachusetts.
A second public service announcement in New York made it clear minutes after the first mistake that 911 is not down, and officials in Connecticut on X made it clear that Connecticut is not also having a 911 failure.
In April, 911 services went down in four states, making it impossible for millions of people to quickly call the police. The power outages seemed to be caused by a cut wire that happened when a light pole was being put up. Services were back up and running in a few hours.