Massachusetts suffers statewide outage of 911 emergency system By Reuters

(Reuters) – The 911 system for emergency calls in Massachusetts suffered a statewide outage on Tuesday, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said, preventing residents from using the number to call for police, ambulances or fire assistance.

“Currently the statewide 911 system is down and calls are not going through,” Wu said at an afternoon news briefing. “We’ve been in touch with the state and all the relevant officials to work on getting this resolved.”

The cause of the outage has not been determined. State and local officials asked residents needing help to use direct local police or fire numbers.

“This could be very temporary, we’re waiting to hear a little later about how long it will last,” Boston Police Chief Michael Cox said at the briefing.