Oakland 911 dispatch services fully restored, but failures previously predicted

OAKLAND, Calif. - Oakland 911 dispatchers are no longer using pen and paper to dispatch police, fire and medical crews after more than 24 hours of communications issues and a system failure.

The technical issues caused delays Friday after an unexpected power outage on Thursday afternoon near the main emergency communication center, a city spokesperson said.

The city said after 10 minutes without power, emergency calls were temporarily routed to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.

A source told KTVU the transfer switch at the emergency communications center connecting the main power with the battery backup and the generator has been broken for at least two years. The source claimed it was never addressed and call takers had to be shuffled to the fire dispatch center on Thursday.

911 phone lines were restored Friday morning and the city’s computer aided dispatch system became fully functional Friday evening, the city said.

"Technical issues affecting the City of Oakland’s 911 dispatch services were effectively resolved Friday afternoon, and as of 5 p.m. all emergency calls are being received and dispatched as normal," the city said in a statement. "This is the result of round-the-clock dedication by City staff and vendors to swiftly resolve technical issues that arose Thursday afternoon, stemming from an unforeseen power outage. Work continues to resolve the contributing factors of this incident and to reinforce the systems that support emergency dispatch staff, to prevent future incidents."

It comes two weeks after an Alameda County civil grand jury warned that the 20-year-old system is waiting to fail catastrophically.

The grand jury’s report said the software and hardware is so out of date it’s no longer supportable.

"The city risks a catastrophic failure of the system," according to the report. "If that happens, they will be back to paper and pencil, as they were during the recent ransomware attack."

Jurors learned the Oakland Police Department is forced to buy replacement parts for the dispatch system on eBay because the parts are no longer supplied by the vendor. Oakland and one other city are the only customers left in the nation, the report states.

Records show despite the city buying new computer aided dispatch equipment and software, it is now five years old and has never been fully installed.

The process will take at least three months, a source told KTVU who describes the current hardware as "duct taped together" with the old equipment currently failing to turn back on after Thursday’s power outage.

"Police officers, dispatchers and even the county grand jury all warned this would happen," Oakland Police Officers’ Association President Barry Donelan said.

The City of Oakland said if you call 911 and your call drops, or you receive a busy signal to hang up and call back. 

Brooks Jarosz is an investigative reporter for KTVU. Email him at  brooks.jarosz@fox.com and follow him on Facebook and Twitter @BrooksKTVU