Photo via Shutterstock

More than a day after D.C.’s 911 system shut down for over an hour, officials are blaming a contractor for the outage.

Officials said today that a plumbing contractor hit an emergency shutoff button at the city’s 911 call center on Saturday night, NBC 4 reports. The contractor was looking for a plumbing leak “that threatened highly sensitive equipment.”

The outage began around 11:35 p.m., Chris Geldart of D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency said yesterday. Within four minutes, call takers left their posts at the Office of Unified Communications and headed to a backup facility. But when they arrived, officials found that the equipment failure was affecting their ability to transfer calls from the main center.

They began alerting the public around midnight, offering a 10-digit number as an alternative to calling 911, Geldart said. D.C.’s Fire and EMS department told NBC that they received 30 medical calls and five fire calls via the 10-digit number, while the Metropolitan Police Department said they received five dispatch calls.

Around 12:25 a.m. officials began receiving limited calls at the backup center, and service was restored at both locations by 1:15 a.m., according to Geldart.

D.C. emergency officials are planning to add more security and signage around the all-stop button, NBC reports.