Emergency dispatch services in Forest Park were down overnight as a massive IT outage disrupted services across the country.
“As much as it didn’t hit Forest Park, our dispatch center was hit but services were not interrupted. We have a backup system,”said Rachell Entler, village administrator for Forest Park.
Entler said the village’s calls are routed through the dispatch center in River Forest, which experienced the outage.
“They had to transfer their 911 calls to their backup system,” Entler said. “They had to do some logging of information manually.”
Entler said the dispatch system, West Suburban Consolidated Dispatch Center, was back online by 5 a.m. this morning.
“They were on top of it right away,” Entler said.
The Associated Press reported that CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, said the incident was not caused by a security or cyberattack. The cause 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 canceled at O’Hare Airport. Nine flights have been canceled 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.