A global technology-related outage impacting many 911 and non-emergency call centers across the U.S. on Thursday and Friday appears to be mostly resolved in Juneau.
The outage was caused by the U.S. cybersecurity company CrowdStrike during a software update that malfunctioned.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” the company said in a released statement.
After the company identified the issue, it said a fix was sent to customers.
The erroneous update by the company crashed Microsoft, which spread the issue worldwide as it’s the most used desktop operating system, according to the Statcounter website.
In Alaska, problems began to emerge Thursday evening.
Call centers across the state for many 911 emergency lines stopped working correctly because of “a nationwide technology-related outage,” the Alaska State Troopers said on social media.
Some dispatch centers lost use of their digital call systems and had to switch to analog phones or rely on other dispatch centers that were still functioning, said Austin McDaniel, communications director for the Alaska Department of Public Safety.
In a Facebook post, Alaska State Troopers wrote 911 was back up and running as of 4:23 a.m.
Juneau’s 911 system was not impacted, according to a Juneau Police Department spokesperson. No “blue screen” events indicating a system crash occurred.
“Our public safety dispatchers were very proactive, placing multiple test calls during the night,” Erann Kalwara, JPD’s public safety manager, said. “All systems and call handling functioned properly. Our vendor, Alaska Communications, monitored the issue and kept in touch with us.”
Bartlett Regional Hospital’s operations also remained unscathed. Erin Hardin, director of marketing and communications for BRH, said the hospital does not use products from CrowdStrike.
Cruise lines and hotels are reporting problems with their mobile apps, check-in, and new reservations, according to Nate Vallier, a travel advisor and co-owner at the Alaska Travel Desk in Juneau.
He said Four Points in Juneau was able to recover two computers and check people into their rooms. The Baranof and Travellodge were both unaffected.
“Airlines couldn’t check people in, even the U.S. customs was having issues,” Vallier said. “When you have an enterprise system where you try to network — whether you’re a bank, an airline — if you’re using an enterprise system where you have to log in — that’s the issue.”
Delta Airlines took the biggest hit because of this. Vallier said many of his Delta and American passengers were affected and rebooked to fly in on Saturday.
People hoping to fly into Juneau are expected to encounter issues, but it appears travelers had little trouble leaving.
On-time performance statistics for Thursday for Juneau from FlightStats. (Screenshot from FlightStats)
The current delay status for the Juneau International Airport is “very low,” according to FlightStats.
The one Delta flight out of Juneau on Friday left after some delay and Alaska Airlines could also fly out.
Dawn Cavanaugh with National Car Rental in Juneau said their system was down Thursday for car rentals, but is up and running again on Friday.
Alaska Airlines had four cancelled flights and 81 delays nationally for Friday as of 1:30 p.m. according to FlightAware.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356. The New York Times contributed to this article.
