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Massachusetts 911 system restored after major statewide outage [Video]

A statewide outage of the Massachusetts 911 system has ended, officials with the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said. “The Massachusetts 911 system has been restored,” the agency announced on social media. “The public may now resume calling 911 for emergencies.””The state 911 department continues to investigate the cause of the disruption,” the EOPSS said. “We will provide more info when available.”Earlier in the day, emergency dispatchers in Massachusetts were disrupted by a “major,” statewide outage.Because of the outage, state officials triggered an emergency alert to cellphones at approximately 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon. “Calls are not going through,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said about the 911 system. “We’ve been in touch with the state and with all the relevant officials to work on getting this resolved.”Within the city of Boston, emergency officials said internal communications are working normally and that each department remains capable of contacting the partner agencies necessary for appropriate responses. “We share the same (Computer Aided Dispatch) system, that’s working fine,” said Boston EMS Commissioner James Hooley. “Any information that gets entered by any of the agencies, where somebody contacts Fire, Police or EMS and we need the service of the other agency, we send each other a message, we talk on radios and we bail each other out.” The Brockton Fire Department also referenced the outage in a statement posted to social media on Tuesday. That department, like Boston, urged residents to use a fire alarm box or direct line to the fire or police departments in case of an emergency.Brookline officials asked residents not to call 911 to “test” the system. “When you dial 911 we receive a location and the number that called but are unable to communicate. Dispatch is trying to call back all numbers that call 911 via calling back on the business line. Please DO NOT call 911 to test it out as it takes time away from calling back other callers,” Brookline said in an alert to the community. Fire boxes in Boston are essentially telegraphs that send a signal in Morse code when triggered. They do not use telephone systems. Several years ago, Massachusetts suffered sporadic 911 outages. At the time, it was blamed on outages from Louisiana-based CenturyLink, which affected some Verizon customers.