911 Emergency Call System in Massachusetts Broke Down for 2 Hours

TapTechNews June 20th, according to reports from the Associated Press and CNBC today, on Tuesday afternoon local time, the 911 emergency call system across the whole state of Massachusetts broke down for 2 hours.

On Wednesday local time, the 911 department of Massachusetts responded to this incident, stating that this failure was caused by a malfunction of the firewall software. The statewide malfunction started at 1:15 PM on Tuesday, and the department later worked with 911 vendor Comtech to resolve the issue.

After a preliminary investigation, it was determined that this failure was caused by the firewall preventing calls from reaching the 911 dispatch center. However, the reason why the firewall prevented the calls is still under investigation.

The local 911 department and Comtech said that the preliminary review results of the incident indicated that this accident was not caused by a cyber attack or a hacker attack.

The vendor has taken a technical solution to ensure that such a situation does not occur again.

The 911 service interruption in Massachusetts lasted for two hours and was completely restored at 3:15 PM local time on Tuesday. During this period, the department did not receive any reports of emergencies being affected during the service interruption.

Although some calls failed to get through, Massachusetts said that the system allows the dispatch center to identify the caller's phone number and call back.

TapTechNews found out that there had been a 911 interruption incident in Massachusetts a few years ago, caused by CenturyLink in Louisiana. And in April this year, workers installing streetlight poles in Missouri accidentally cut the fiber optic line, resulting in emergency response agencies in Nebraska, Nevada, and South Dakota being unable to use the 911 service.