Power outage to blame for state ferry website failure after weekend of delays and reduced departures

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It started on the night of last Thursday through Friday, when more than 140 departures were canceled due to understaffing at the Washington State Ferries (WSF) organization. It was then followed by a weekend of reduced crossings and rescheduled boats, and now the WSF faces a website outage affecting the Department of Transportation’s schedules, alerts, cameras and mobile app. of Washington State.

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The outages – which appear to be consistent across the WSDOT website – were reported around 10 p.m. Sunday. As technicians worked on a fix within hours, WSF’s pages for its ferry schedules, alerts, and cameras still redirected to a “404” error page until at least 8 am. morning. The website appeared to be back to normal on Monday afternoon. Telephones and customer service call centers are also on the decline.

WSDOT said a power outage was to blame: “An extensive power outage interrupted our website and travel information, thank you for your patience as we bring these services back online.”

Last week’s problems were a direct result of staffing issues, with the ferry service citing COVID-19 restrictions that “have not allowed us to hire or train new hires at the same rate as before the pandemic” .

While the WSF typically increases its hiring once a year before the start of the summer, it says it is now constantly recruiting new staff to account for its lack of deckhands.

Others have speculated that ferry workers may have called the sick to protest the upcoming COVID vaccine mandate for state employees, which goes into effect on October 18.

What you see today is the direct result of tenure, of people refusing to show up for work, ”Republican State Representative Andrew Barkis told MyNorthwest. “Whether this is a demonstration, whether it is a taste of what’s to come here next week, is of great concern.”

Ryan Brazeau – a representative of the Inland Boatmen’s Union – disputed this claim, however, telling KIRO Radio that of their 1,000 deckhands, only 40 did not disclose their vaccination status and that the vaccination mandate is not probably not to blame for the recent shortages.

I think it would be shocking to everyone if people gave up those jobs, Brazeau said. They are great jobs, they would give up a pension, a retirement and everything that goes with it.

Brazeau further noted that the majority of deckhands want to work and have worked overtime to help.

WSDOT encourages people to follow an organized list of Twitter accounts for updates. The account also displays job vacancies.

Follow @NickNorthwest

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