999 system failure explained

Wednesday 18 July 2018

Emergency calls had to be diverted yesterday after the Bailiwick's 999 system broke down.

Two devices designed to route all 999 calls made on-island failed simultaneously – the first time in JESCC's history this has happened.

At around 09:30 the failure and alternative numbers – either the police station switch board or three mobile numbers – were announced. A divert was activated just over an hour later.

A States of Guernsey spokesman said it was unusual for both to stop working at the same time.  

“All 999 calls are being successfully transferred to JESCC," he said. "The cause of this morning’s issues has been determined as the devices which are specifically responsible for the routing of all 999 calls that are made on-island. These devices operate in a High Availability (HA) mode and are designed so that should one device fail the other one ensures continuity of service.  

“It is rare that both devices should fail at the same time, however in this case that is what happened.  Working quickly and efficiently with our partners Sure, the States Information Systems and Services (ISS) team ensured that a technical work around was applied allowing 999 calls to be routed to the JESSC as normal until normal services could be restored. 

“Both of the routing devices have been repaired, with the full resilient service being restored at 3:58pm this afternoon.”

One 999 call was received during the outage, but this turned out to be an advisory call rather than an emergency, the spokesman added.

“We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the media for quickly relaying the alternative numbers provided, and members of the public who shared our social media posts.”