Oakland’s 911 system is back up and running as intended following the restoration of the city’s phone service Friday morning.
The entire emergency dispatch system for police and fire services went down at about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday after somebody damaged AT&T fiber optic cables in an apparent copper wire theft.
The city’s IT teams worked with AT&T to get the computer-aided system and internet back online Thursday evening, but repairs to the phone lines took until Friday morning to complete.
During the outage, 911 calls were routed through the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office while OPD dispatchers were relocated to the Oakland Fire Department Dispatch Center and the sheriff’s dispatch center.
The Fire Department’s dispatchers were able to handle all fire and medical calls for service and the county was answering 911 calls and relaying information to OPD dispatchers stationed at the Fire Department.
The city has contingency plans for just such a situation but “unfortunately both of the initial fallback plans were compromised last night,” Oakland police Chief James Beere said Thursday.
