Several counties and cities throughout southwest and central Virginia also experienced outages affecting 911 lines and phone systems. Authorities from the affected areas redirected citizens to alternative phone numbers to call in case of emergency as they addressed the issues.
The two events are not believed to be connected.
Akamai tweeted Thursday afternoon that a bug in the DNS system, triggered by a software update, was responsible for the website outages some customers of the company experienced. The “disruption,” lasted up to one hour, and Akamai was able to solve the issue by retracting the software update, the company said.
“We apologize for the inconvenience that resulted. We are reviewing our software update process to prevent future disruptions,” the company tweeted.
Some of the Virginia counties affected by 911 outages Thursday included Rockbridge, Campbell, Wythe, Grayson and Carrol. North Carolina’s Amherst County also announced Thursday afternoon that it was experiencing issues with 911 lines and instructed residents to use landlines when calling.
Most have announced that 911 lines are back in service or starting to come back online after the outages. Grayson County, Halifax County and Amherst County confirmed that the outages in their areas were caused by cut fiber lines.
The live updates for this event have ended.
The “disruption,” lasted up to one hour, and Akamai was able to solve the issue by retracting the software update, the company said. Akamai reiterated that a cyberattack was not the cause of the outages.
“We apologize for the inconvenience that resulted. We are reviewing our software update process to prevent future disruptions,” the company tweeted.
“You can call 911 services if you have an emergency,” said Elizabeth Sweeney, Wythe County’s Public Information Officer. “If your call does not go through, text 911.”
County authorities have also instructed fire and rescue stations to have workers on standby in case a resident goes there directly for assistance.
This includes the Times of India, which tweeted Tuesday that some of the digital services were downed from the Akamai outage. The site later confirmed that their services were reinstated.
The New York Metro Transportation Authority also cited the Akamai issues as the cause of some inaccessible digital tools. The organization has not announced yet whether the services are back online.
Phones at the sheriff’s office are now back in service, authorities announced on Facebook.
The company said that services seemed to be resuming normal operations, based on observation, but they were still monitoring the situation.
Galax city officials said that a fiber cut from CenturyLink was affecting 911 lines in Galax, Grayson County and Caroll County. Those in the affected areas were instructed to call 911 from a landline, text 911 or call (276) 920-4391.
Grayson county officials estimated phone lines would be back in service in two to three hours as CenturyLink completed repairs on the fiber cut.
Halifax County’s 911 dispatch system is also out of service because of a fiber cut, officials said. The outage also affects dispatch for South Boston, and authorities provided asked residents in need of help to text 911 or call (434) 579-2870.
Other Virginia counties contending with 911 outages haven’t announced a cause yet.
Various websites affected by mass outages Tuesday showed that DNS, or Domain Name System, failures had caused the issues.
It was unclear how many of the downed websites use Akamai’s DNS, but the company tweeted that it was “aware of an emerging issues” with the service and it was “actively investigating the issue” around the same time mass outage reports began.
Albermale County reported “widespread, intermittent phone issues” throughout the area, and asked resident to text 911 or call (434) 977-9041.
Buckingham County and Greene County have also provided temporary emergency numbers as they contend with downed 911 lines. The numbers are (434) 956-0958 and (434) 566-2216, respectively.
The sites experiencing outages include US Bank, the McDonald’s app, Fortnite Discover, American Express, UPS and Costco.
No information has been released at this time on the cause of the outages.
