Walter Finch
Emergency services in the Balearic Islands were left in chaos last night after the 112 emergency line crashed for over nine hours.
The outage occurred due to Telefónica replacing outdated copper cables with fibre optic ones, causing severe disruptions to the service.
To deal with the unprecedented situation, the government had to activate a nine-digit phone number for users who were unable to contact 112 during emergencies.
The first reports of problems with the secure line were received at midnight, with operators detecting that the issues were specific to Movistar customers and not affecting Orange or Jazztel users.
It was later confirmed that the problem was caused by an error during the ‘Proyecto Faro’ upgrade, which involved updating the network infrastructure.
As a result of the outage, the 112 emergency hotline was not available to certain users, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of calls received by the emergency services centre in Balears.
A crisis team was established, and the number 871114250 was provided to those who were unable to contact 112 during the disruption.
By about 9:30am the situation had been brought under control, and the 112 hotline resumed normal operations.
Government officials were left unimpressed with the lengthy disruption to such a critical service and are seeking an explanation for the incident.
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