A huge telecoms outage in the Netherlands knocked the country’s emergency services offline for more than four hours.
Police, fire services and ambulances scrambled to set up alternatives after the biggest outage in living memory in the country on Monday.
The outage began at around 4pm local time, forcing emergency services to quickly establish new contact numbers that were publicised on social media and through alerts to mobile phones.
National network KPN said that the outage had been repaired around 8pm, with the 112 emergency number working again and mobile and fixed phone services were restored.
Police sent officers on to the streets so people could approach them for emergency help and advised people suffering medical problems to go to the nearest hospital.
Spokeswoman Suzanne van de Graaf told national broadcaster NOS: "We're appealing to everybody who wants to report an emergency and needs help to go on to the street.
“Police officers with walkie-talkies are taking to the streets as much as possible so they can be spoken to.”
Some police forces advised people to use social media if they needed to contact emergency services, while others advised people to go to public buildings for urgent help.
Justice and security minister Ferd Grapperhaus said in a tweet that he was "in direct contact with KPN" about the outage.
The cause of the outage was not immediately clear.
A KPN spokeswoman said: “We have no reason to think it was a hack and we monitor our systems 24/7.”
