NZ quake knocks out 111 service

New Zealand’s 111 operator service has resumed and is functioning normally, following an earthquake that saw it lose connectivity.

The call centre that answers and redirects the calls was damaged by the earthquake, requiring staff to be evacuated.

Consequently, for a period of approximately 30 minutes immediately after the earthquake at 12.05 am, the 111 operator service was unavailable.

Communications in and out of some communities have been severely impacted, and people in the Kaikoura and North Canterbury areas may still experience difficulties in calling 111.

Spark is sending engineers into affected local areas to restore any impacted 111 connectivity as soon as possible.

As some local communications are still working, people may be able to contact local emergency services directly.

The normal procedure when the 111 call centre is affected by a natural disaster is to reroute 111 calls directly to each of the emergency services, while the backup 111 call centre, in this case in Porirua, is activated. 

However, the team making the switchover procedure during the quake was impeded by falling ceiling tiles and air-conditioning equipment, which landed on the very desk being used to make the switch. While staff believed they had completed the procedure, it became apparent after they had urgently left the building that the procedure had not worked properly.

A secondary contingency procedure was then invoked, which involved a remote switchover of the service, managed from the network operations centre in Hamilton. This process was implemented and the 111 service was then restored with emergency services able to field calls directly from that point. 

Once the 111 operator team was relocated to the emergency backup site in Porirua, calls were able to be rerouted back to the 111 call centre from 7.50 am.

The 111 operator team has been working through the night with relevant emergency services to minimise any impact to the public. It extends sincere apologies for the 111 service outage and for any distress this may have caused members of the public trying to reach emergency services during that time.

Image credit: ©Voyagerix/Dollar Photo Club