Telecommunications outage hits Montreal police, fire department

Major technical problems affected city-wide network during the day

Image | Montreal police cruiser

Caption: Carolina Amendola says her mother waited more than 5 hours outside her home after repeatedly calling 911 about a burglary, but no officers ever responded until the next day. (Charles Contant/CBC)

The telecommunications system for Montreal police and firefighters was down today during a widespread outage.
The technical problems started around 12 p.m. and service came back around 2 p.m., according to the city.
"The outage took place during work that was underway on the network by the provider," Valérie De Gagné, a spokesperson for the City of Montreal, said in a statement to Radio-Canada.
"Not in any moment was the safety of citizens ever in jeopardy."
De Gagné said the city is concerned about major technical problems affecting the police and fire departments' telecommunication system and is taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.
Quebec courts were also paralyzed over a computer outage during the day.