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- Dutch Telephone Outage Takes Out Nation's Emergency Number
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- THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A major telephone outage took down the Dutch emergency number for more than three hours Monday, forcing police and other first responders to scramble to set up alternatives.
- KPN tweeted at around 7:40 p.m. (1740 GMT) that the outage had been repaired, the 112 alarm number was working again and mobile and fixed phone services were restored.
- The outage began around 4 p.m. (1400 GMT) forcing emergency services to quickly establish new contact numbers that were publicized on social media and via push alerts to many mobile phones.
- Police also sent officers onto the streets so that people could approach them for emergency help and advised people suffering medical problems to go to the nearest hospital.
- "We're appealing to everybody who wants to report an emergency and needs help to ... go onto the street. Police officers with walkie-talkies are taking to the streets as much as possible so they can be spoken to," police spokeswoman Suzanne van de Graaf told national broadcaster NOS.
- Some police forces advised people to use social media if they need to contact emergency services, while others advised people to go to public buildings for urgent help.
- Justice and Security Minister Ferd Grapperhaus said in a tweet that he was "in direct contact with KPN" about the outage.
- The cause of the outage was not immediately clear.
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