MILWAUKEE (WDAY RADIO) – A global IT outage, Friday has made it difficult for North Dakota’s Republican delegates to return home.
A number of North Dakota delegates have found themselves stuck in Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention was held this week.
“Their flights were canceled or pushed back. Some were totally canceled, so they came back to the motel,” said Sandi Sanford the chair of the North Dakota Republican party. “What we’ve decided to do, we’ve reopened a reception room here at our hotel. It’s kind of like a command post. There’s a lot of North Dakota delegates that can’t get on an airplane right now. And while we’re here at our motel, we also were informed that the gas stations are only taking cash.”
Sanford says some delegates are trying to rebook flights, while others are trying to rent cars and carpool to make their way back to North Dakota. “We’re checking in with all the delegates, making sure they have an emergency plan. We want to know where they’re at. And number two, we want to make sure that they have cash, if you’re driving from Milwaukee to Fargo or Milwaukee through North Dakota, we want to make sure that they get into North Dakota and they have cash to get gas.”
Cyber security experts say a computer software update is likely to blame for mass outages impacting airlines, banks, businesses, healthcare organizations and emergency services worldwide.
CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company tackling the issue has indicated the outage is related to a software update through Windows, a Microsoft product. According to a statement made by CrowdStrike’s CEO, the issue is identified and a fix has been deployed to users.
