Computer crash no safety risk, city says

COLUMBUS /

A power failure at the Columbus data center shut down the city’s entire computer system but never caused a safety risk to the public, according to police and fire representatives.

Power went out at 9:30 a.m. Sunday and was restored two hours later, said Pam O’Grady, deputy director of the city’s department of technology. The task of rebooting systems for individual city departments began immediately and technology employees stayed overnight Sunday to continue the work, O’Grady said.

Maybe you’re feeling harried as another holiday season rushes on by.

Fear not for I am with you, for only 3 feet of superstrong nylon cord and some curtain-rod hardware are keeping my family Christmas tree from going horizontal.

Also, the tree looks to have been decapitated.

That second part wasn’t entirely unexpected.

We cut our tree on Saturday, the day before our traditional tree farm closed for the season.

Pro: Two families, the Deckers and the Clauses, had the run of the place.

Con: The list of available trees was shorter than Santa’s “nice” list of U.S. senators and representatives.

My wife settled on a tree quickly, as usual a little too quickly, so the kids and I stomped around some more

She said that work continued Monday, but she did not know how many departments were still without service or when all of them would be back on line. The cause of the power failure was still unknown Monday afternoon, she said.

The police and fire divisions’ nonemergency lines were still inoperable Monday morning, which caused people to flood the 911 center with more calls.

Columbus police announced at 1:20 p.m. Monday on social media that all non-emergency phone lines were again working.

Jason Pappas, president of Fraternal Order of Police Capital City Lodge No. 9, said the failure was “not an officer safety issue, it’s an efficiency issue.”

Officers normally type reports as they interview victims and witnesses in their cruisers. During the failure, they had to take handwritten notes and drive to a substation to transcribe them into the computer system.

Officers cannot wait until the end of their shifts to transcribe notes because some reports require immediate attention, such as requesting arrest warrants, Pappas said. That means the officers were spending that time off the street.

“If it’s not a life- anddeath call, it will take longer for an officer to respond,” Pappas said of holding calls during the failure.

Pappas said the division’s computers go down on a “fairly regular basis,” but nothing to the scale of this latest crash.

Detectives investigating crimes can’t look up old cases or get suspect information,” Pappas said. “It’s a major setback for them.”

During the failure, the fire division was asking people with nonemergency calls to dial the old fire emergency number (614-221-2345) that existed before the 911 system, Battalion Chief Steve Martin said.

The public was “still being taken care of,” Martin said.