Worldwide outage impacts Windsor-Detroit border crossings and local hospitals

Backups at the Windsor-Detroit tunnel amid a worldwide Microsoft outage. (Rob Hindi/AM800 News)

The worldwide Microsoft outage affected traffic at both the Ambassador Bridge and Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Friday morning.

According to the bridge company, "The Ambassador Bridge is monitoring the situation and will advise once it has returned to normal operations."Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ont. on Friday, July 19, 2024. (Chris Campbell/CTV News Windsor)

The Canada Border Services Agency posts updated border wait times online. 

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A statement released from local hospitals also said, "Patients should expect delays in service and potential appointment cancellations following a Microsoft/CrowdStrike global IT outage, which has been confirmed NOT to be a cyber-attack."

In the emergency departments, patients could expect longer wait times and surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and diagnostic imaging patients will be contacted directly by hospital staff if the outages impact appointments.

By Friday afternoon, a news release from Windsor-Essex hospitals said "the majority of clinical systems have been restored and remaining non-clinical systems will be completed over the weekend. While wait times have been reduced significantly due to these efforts, patients may experience minor delays over the course of the weekend. Hospitals will contact patients directly if there is an impact to appointments or procedures."

Porter Airlines said it is cancelling its flights until 12 p.m. ET due to the outage. According to the Windsor International Airport, the Porter flight scheduled later in the day is still on time. The Air Canada flights don’t appear to be impacted.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and escalating disruptions continued after the technology company said it was gradually fixing it.

Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

CrowdStrike said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

With files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press.