Lightning knocked out emergency line

A lightning strike has been blamed for knocking out the government’s emergency phone line, 112, after a short thunderstorm last Tuesday morning.

The line was disconnected for about 40 minutes, a spokeswoman for the Home Affairs Ministry told The Sunday Times of Malta.

During the outage, the government supplied an alternative number which was to be used by anyone requiring emergency assistance.

However, the incident raised the question as to why there was no backup plan that would enable the 112 line to function in case of a similar incident.

The ministry spokesman said the problem was not a “system failure but a power failure following a direct lightning strike”.

As a result, she said, both the “first and second level answering points were affected”.

Asked whether there was a back-up to make sure the phone number remained in use even in such cases, the spokeswoman said “an internal exercise will be launched to verify how such an occurrence can be further averted”.

She did not specify what this exercise would involve.

An off-premises recovery site was “in deployment stage” and would be finalised “in the coming days”, she added.

The emergency phoneline receives an average of 26...