Emergency services in River Forest were down overnight after a massive IT outage disrupted services across the country.
“We had to go to our manual operations overnight but our police dispatch staff handled it very well,” said Matt Walsh, village administrator.
According to Walsh the system went down close to midnight and was restored around 3 a.m.
Officers switched over to manual reporting overnight and updated everything once the system was restored.
“We are just happy to be back online and thankful to our staff for being flexible and resilient in the face of it for some of the redundant processes we have to keep operations running smoothly,” Walsh said.
According to Dan Yopchick, chief communications officer for the Village of Oak Park, West Suburban Consolidated Dispatch Center, along with other 911 centers were affected by the outage.
“Calls were transferred to the backup center and personnel was redeployed to maintain operations,” Yopchick said.
Calls were transferred back to WSCDC by 5 a.m., Yopchick said.
Yopchick said the Village had not been affected in any other way.
West Suburban Hospital CEO Manoj Prasad said their systems were “fully functional.”
“We, too, experienced an outage and our teams worked through the night and restored full functionality,” he said.
The Associated Press reported that CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, said the incident was not caused by a security or cyberattack. The cause of the issue was a faulty software update.
The widespread system outage affected airports, banks, hospitals and other services.
According to Fly Chicago, as of 10:15 a.m., there have been a total of 174 flights cancelled at O’Hare Airport. Nine flights have been cancelled at Midway Airport. The average delay at O’Hare is 47 min.
FlightAware.com, a multinational technology company that provides real-time flight tracking data, said more than 1,400 flights in and out the United States have been canceled.
CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz posted on X that the company was working with customers through a support portal for the latest updates and “will continue to provide complete and continuous updates” on their website.
“We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels,” he said. “Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”
This is a developing story.