The abrupt failure of Massachusetts’ 911 system on Tuesday was a stark example of the disastrous consequences that can occur when an emergency network that is supposed to be reliable is, without warning, suddenly unreliable.
Last year, more than 3.2 million contacts were made to emergency call centers in Massachusetts.
Calls to 911 fluctuate significantly through the day, but that comes out to an average of 367 calls an hour, an indication of just how impactful the outage on Tuesday may have been.
It was far from the first 911 outage to strike a large region.
Several major failures in recent years have sent officials scrambling.
Locations:
Massachusetts