ATLANTA — Atlanta Police said a water leak led to a failure of electrical circuits at their E911 Center Sunday, jamming the 911 and 311 systems.
Police said there was also an issue with their backup generators, which have since been brought back up. The generators initially only provided half of the building with full power.
Normal operations resumed in the 911 center Monday evening around 7 p.m.
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Rumors began to circulate on social media Sunday night that Atlanta 911 was down. People posted videos of calls to the service ringing and going unanswered.
Atlanta police Deputy Chief Timothy Peek said in a statement Monday that 911 operations never went down, but they did have to move some of their dispatchers to Fulton County’s 911 center.
“We were able to keep 911 and operations ongoing throughout the whole entire event,” Peek said. “As we move forward into today’s operations, we are happy to report hat we have gotten our backup generators up and running and they are working diligently at this time.”
Police say that part of the logjam to the system was so many people calling to see if 911 was operational.
“What we want to stress to our citizens is that we experienced a moment to where people were dialing 911 to check the system,” Peek said. “We don’t want you to do that because that puts additional resources on the system.”
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Peek asked people not to hang up the phone if they dial 911 because calls are put into a cue. He also urged drivers who get in minor accidents on the highway to call The Georgia State Patrol at *GSP.
Peek said Atlanta Police, Atlanta Fire Rescue and the E911 Center have not stopped their normal operations.
“And again, what we want to drive home with our citizens, with everyone, is that if you need 911 services, they are there,” Peek said.
Channel 2′s Christian Jennings talked to Atlanta Fire Rescue, which told her that their CAD dispatch system is down because of the situation. That is the system that tells dispatchers which trucks are in service and which trucks should respond to different calls.
Because of the issues with the call center, they have battalion chiefs physically at the 911 Center making sure things run smoothly.
Atlanta 311 services have resumed, although they can’t help people with municipal court as some outages are still not resolved.
Police said they will provide further updates as the “move through this process.”
— Atlanta Fire Rescue (@ATLFireRescue) November 8, 2021
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