Disaster cleanup giant Qualinet’s phone lines were overwhelmed after a deluge swept across Greater Montreal on Tuesday night, leading the company to propose the creation of a ‘911’-like emergency system. .
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In just three hours, more than 1,000 customers called Qualinet following sewer backups and flooding due to rain in the Montreal and Lanaudière regions.
“In the evening of yesterday, for approximately 90 minutes, some of our call centers received so many calls that the system tripped,” explained the director of operations of Qualinet, Roger Vigneault, by press release.
The latter apologized for these inconveniences and indicated that the company was working with telephony specialists to strengthen its system.
Qualinet, however, wants to go further and plans to invest $200,000 to set up an emergency center similar to “911” to handle customer calls in the event of an event similar to Tuesday’s deluge.
“We have noticed that severe thunderstorms are more and more frequent in Quebec and that our 24/7 telephone service is sometimes faced with capacity challenges in terms of the number of simultaneous calls. In this context, I confirm that we will quickly deploy a system similar to that of 911 services to always respond to our customers,” revealed the president of Qualinet, Éric Pichette.
This is not the first time that Qualinet’s telephone network has collapsed under calls. A similar scenario occurred during a flood in 2014.