Less than a day after San Francisco held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate its new headquarters for emergency call dispatchers, a computer system crash forced staffers to record crucial information on pen and paper.
Mayor London Breed joined top officials from the Department of Emergency Management on Wednesday to celebrate the new call center. Its opening boasts the city’s increased response capacity with five new workstations, a “new and improved” training room and an updated break room.
But by early Thursday morning, the computer system crashed for roughly two and a half hours, according to a source with knowledge of the incident. A department spokesperson confirmed the incident happened between the hours of 4 and 7 a.m.
The department’s director told the San Francisco Chronicle the outage meant people had to run with handwritten notes to summon emergency crews.
The spokesperson said the computer-aided dispatch system, or CAD system, is at the end of its life. The city has selected a vendor for its replacement.
“We are always ready for this. We have to be, because there are many circumstances that can require us to rely on redundant dispatch systems,” the spokesperson said of the outage. “This is why the CAD replacement project is a top priority for the department.”
The department said the public should remain confident in calling 911 for emergencies while it replaces the system.
“We know outdated infrastructure has limitations and interruptions are unpredictable,” Breed’s office said in a statement. “Which is why investing in state of the art technology and infrastructure is critical and important.”