911 calls vanishing on Chicago system

CHICAGO, March 27 (UPI) -- A $6 million upgrade to Chicago's 911 emergency dispatch system contains glitches that cause stacked-up calls to disappear from computer screens, workers say.

A spokeswoman for the city says the vanishing calls are a "display issue" and that no emergency calls go unanswered, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday.

"It's a minor issue with stacked calls," Jennifer Martinez of the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications, told the newspaper. "If there's three jobs, you might only see one. But they remain on the system and dispatchers are still sending those jobs out."

Calls to the emergency center get "stacked" when police officers are responding to higher-priority calls.

The vanishing calls are believed to be tied to new servers that were installed as part of the system upgrade, the Sun-Times said.