This Wednesday evening, an outage occurred at Orange, following “malfunctions”. As a result, users could not reach emergency numbers. Three deaths are potentially linked to these dysfunctions.
Could not reach help for hours
Samu, police, firefighters … many emergency services were difficult to reach on Wednesday between 6 pm and midnight. “The situation has improved markedly since midnight. The service is functioning but some difficulties persist. The network is under surveillance with increased vigilance, especially at peak call times. The teams remain mobilized and the situation must return completely to normal in the next few hours “, told the operator to BFMTV.
What are the causes of this dysfunction?
According to the Orange network, the failure is due to a malfunction on a gateway, which is the point of connection and redirection of digital signals and voice calls, in a center based in the Hauts de France. The processing of emergency calls would be centralized there for the whole of France. “It must have been around 6 pm and all the Samus started alerting the call centers of problems. People were unable to access the service, calls were not arriving, others were cutting themselves off in the middle of a conversation… ”, explained François Braun, president of the Samu-Urgences union in France and emergency doctor to the media The Parisian. “Very quickly, we did a little tour of France and we noticed that almost all the departments were affected“, he says.
Traveling with the Prime Minister in Tunis, Gérald Darmanin Minister of the Interior and Cédric O, Secretary of State in charge of Digital, rushed back to Paris during the night to hold a crisis meeting this morning. Malfunctions judged “Serious and unacceptable », Indicated Gérald Darmanin in press conference. Orange CEO Stéphane Richard was “Summoned” this morning by the government, since “Three serious incidents are to be deplored “. This is a person who had cardiovascular disease in Morbihan, she died. She would have tried to join the emergency services, underlined the Minister of the Interior. Two other deaths of the same type occurred in Réunion. “But I cannot say today if the time (before the arrival of help, editor’s note) was particularly long and if it is attributable to this emergency number. What is certain is that people testified that they tried to call several times and that they were not able to get operators straight away ”, he lamented.
400 alternative numbers deployed
The government put in place alternatives as early as 7 p.m. “In all the prefectures of France, 90 departments have set up (during the dysfunction) these emergency bypass numbers”, underlined Gérald Darmanin. “400 numbers were set up and they made it possible to respond to the most difficult situations“, Added the Minister of the Interior.
The numbers are available on the government website at the following address: www.interieur.gouv.fr
