911, 311 and other SF services restored after outage

SAN FRANCISCO -- A power outage in San Francisco on Friday morning that briefly interrupted some city services, including 911 and 311, has been restored, city officials said.

San Francisco Department of Emergency Management Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll said technical difficulties with the city's 911 system began around 6:55 a.m.

City officials then realized the issue had spread to other city services. As the outage was being investigated, 911 was put into manual mode and took calls at a limited capacity.

"This is a situation we've planned for. We have experienced power outages in the past and our protocols continue to support our systems and our response," Carroll said.

Around 10 a.m., city officials said power was restored.

All services appear to be working normally. Although there is no word so far on what caused the outage, Carroll said the outage wasn't caused by PG&E and appears to be an internal malfunction.

"Although this outage is under investigation, the initial assessment indicates this was not a utility power outage and a localized connectivity issue," Carroll said. "While the incident is currently under investigation, we are actively implementing mitigation measures to ensure we do not have this happen again."

Although 911 service was limited during the outage, any calls made to 911 at that time were tracked and are being returned by 911 operators, according to Carroll.

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said, "We do prepare for these types of outages and we've had them before but want to assure the public that when these outages, things of this nature that happen, that we will still be there."

Residents are being reminded to only dial 911 in emergencies.