Emergency calls in the City of Oakland were being answered by Alameda County after the city's 911 system went down Wednesday night, with the outage attributed to copper wire theft and damaged fiber optic lines. Meanwhile, the Gilroy and Morgan Hill police departments also reported outages to their non-emergency lines because of damaged lines.
Around 8:30 p.m., dispatchers at the police department noticed the Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system froze and displayed an error message. Dispatchers tried both emergency and non-emergency lines and found there was no service to all phone lines, internet or CAD, police said.
All 911 calls were transferred to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office around 9:45 p.m.
In a message posted on social media Thursday morning, Police Chief James Beere said dispatchers have been relocated to dispatch centers at the Oakland Fire Department and Alameda County Sheriff's Office. 911 calls are being answered by the county and information is being relayed to dispatchers at the fire department.
Later Thursday, both police and AT&T said both copper and fiber optic lines were cut, and police were investigating the damage as a criminal act.
"Unfortunately, this is an epidemic issue, not just here in the Bay Area but all throughout California. Copper wiring and theft of fiber optics is an issue that we're struggling with. A lot of other agencies are seeing this as well," Beere said at an afternoon press conference.
He added, "I've been with the police department for over 30 years, I've seen generators go down, but we've never seen our optic lines be non-functioning, our phones disconnected, and then to see it bleed over to the fire deparmtment where their phones went down it was very concerning."
Police said the city's IT department is working with AT&T to restore internet and phone services.
The same issue was also impacting the city's OAK311, which handles non-emergency calls. Officials said infrastructure emergencies such as flooding or a downed power line should be reported by calling 911, while non-emergencies should be reported by email to OAK311@oaklandca.gov.
Also on Thursday, the Morgan Hill Police Department reported its non-emergency lines were down since 1 a.m. on Thursday because of a reported copper cable cut affecting Verizon service. The Gilroy Police Department said a cut fiber line was the cause of an outage to its non-emergency line starting at about midnight, although it said it was relying on two backup lines.
There was no estimated time of restoration to the three departments' phone lines.
