Oakland's 911 system went down around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, and 911 calls are being transferred to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office while repairs continue. There was no timeline for restoration as of Thursday.
Why it matters: 911 still works in Oakland, but calls take a different path. Police are answering only the most urgent calls for now.
What happened
The city's computer-aided dispatch system froze Wednesday evening, and the dispatch center then lost phone, internet and dispatch service, according to CBS San Francisco and ABC7. Calls started going to the sheriff's office around 9:45 p.m.
Dispatchers moved to the Oakland Fire Department and sheriff's dispatch centers. Oakland police are responding only to Priority One calls, and fire dispatch is handling all fire and medical calls, the outlets reported.
What AT&T says
In a statement reported by ABC7, AT&T said the outage was caused by theft and vandalism, including cut fiber and copper lines, and that its technicians had been on site since Wednesday night. ABC7 also reported similar outages at other departments around California.
What residents should do
Keep calling 911 for emergencies. The city's OAK311 service line is also down, so infrastructure emergencies should go to 911, and non-emergency requests can be emailed to [email protected].
This is the second East Bay dispatch disruption this week. Berkeley's calls were also routed to the county after a fire at its police headquarters: read that story.