Facebook Emergency: Californians Dial 911 Following Brief Social Media Outage

Following a brief outage of Facebook early Friday morning, the Los Angeles Police Department experienced an “unknown number” of calls from concerned citizens who deemed the situation enough of an emergency to make a 911 call. 

Facebook reportedly went back online at 9:20 a.m., according to the Los Angeles Times, but not without a tweet following the incident from LAPD Sgt. Burton Brink.

In his tweet, Sgt. Burton Brink made it clear to the public that Facebook being offline is not a law enforcement issue:

#Facebook is not a Law Enforcement issue, please don’t call us about it being down, we don’t know when FB will be back up!

— Sgt. Brink (@LASDBrink) August 1, 2014

A few hours later, he sent out a second tweet backing his previous statements on social media:

Yes we got calls #facebookdown That is why I sent out my previous msg to prevent them. Unk number received on 911 or reg number TY #LASD

— Sgt. Brink (@LASDBrink) August 1, 2014

During the outage, Facebook users internationally did not waste any time tweeting and instagramming about the brief disconnect from one of their preferred social media outlets:

From Twitter:

I guess @Facebook is down… #facebookdown #zuckisnothappy pic.twitter.com/RqUTvbkvUZ

— Sébastien Levert (@sebastienlevert) August 1, 2014

#Facebook is #down – pic.twitter.com/Qa4Fda4tB1 #Facebookdown

— Muschelschloss ? (@Muschelschloss) August 1, 2014

From Instagram:

Apparently this isn’t the only time LAPD has experienced technology-related 911 calls:

@moneyries yes, we get calls all the time like this, cable TV, all sorts of things not working, they think we control.

— Sgt. Brink (@LASDBrink) August 1, 2014