Hardware Failure Caused 9-1-1 Dispatch Crash

A hardware failure is believed to be behind problems at emergency dispatch centers in Everett and south County today. For a little more than 8 hours dispatchers for Everett Police, Everett Fire and most other jurisdictions in our area were unable to use their computer aided dispatch services. That meant everything had to be written by hand and relayed on cards at SNOPAC and SNOCOM.

Radios were operating fine and 9-1-1 calls were not affected but the dispatching and communication of information all went old school and officers could not run identity or driver’s record checks and fire staff manned their Fire Operations Centers at their headquarters. Incoming fire and medic calls were relayed from 9-1-1 to the operations centers who then dispatched those calls to the proper stations.

MyEverettNews.com asked Kurt Mills from SNOPAC911 in Everett if they found out the issue and he passed along the following notice that was sent out to their agencies this afternoon including Everett Police and Fire.

“Shortly after the regularly scheduled software update last night was completed technical staff initiated a pre-planned process to replace some of the network hardware at SNOCOM. This work is part of an on-going effort to strengthen the network infrastructure for the New World Systems infrastructure”.

“This second phase of work caused the system wide network connectivity issues. Technical teams from both PSAPs isolated the suspect hardware and restored functionality.”

Computer Aided Dispatch Service was restored around three o’clock this afternoon. For the past few years the area dispatch centers have been moving to a new software system to improve communications between emergency responders. Along with that have come several challenges both in the software systems referred to as “New World” as well as the hardware needed to make the various software systems work.