A unique systems patch designed so the City of Ottawa could absorb the “leap second” failed on New Year’s Eve, knocking out radios for OC Transpo and public works.



The radio outage for nearly 3,000 users started just after 7 p.m. and lasted about an hour, according to the city.



Pierre Poirier, the city’s head of security and emergency management, said he has asked for a fulsome report on why the patch failed.



“Absolutely, this is a serious event,” Poirier said Tuesday.



There were no major impacts to city operations and responses in the hour the radios were down, Poirier said. Staff in Transpo and public works and environmental services switched to using cellphones for communication.



Those were two critical departments in city operations on a snowy New Year’s Eve. Transpo was offering free service to riders. Public works was part of the security plan, in charge of moving barriers around the closed streets.



The leap second is the time added to the end of 2016 to sync the international standard clock with the earth’s rotation. The earth is slowing down, so small increments of time have been added to the clock.



The last leap second was in June 2015. The City of Ottawa, using the same radio system, had no problem.



The city had been preparing for the Dec. 31, 2016 leap second for the past two or three months to avoid a Y2K-like scenario. Bell was responsible for the patch.



The leap second was triggered at midnight on Greenwich Mean Time, which is five hours ahead of Ottawa.



Poirier was with other city officials in the emergency operations centre at Ottawa City Hall when the radios conked out. The city launches the emergency operations centre whenever there’s a major event, such as Canada Day, or in this case, the massive New Year’s Eve bash downtown as the country kicked off Canada 150 celebrations.



Around 7 p.m., the radios went down and reps from Transpo and public works, who were in the emergency operations centre, quickly implemented the backup plan.



When the city tested the patch before New Year’s Eve, everything worked fine.



“Similar to a Y2K, we had contingencies and also a patch in place, but the patch didn’t function as it was intended to function,” Poirier said. “As a result, there was a loss of synchronization in the software and therefore some of the radios lost their ability to transmit or receive.”



According to Poirier, the City of Montreal also experienced problems using the same patch. The Citizen hasn’t yet heard back from an inquiry to the City of Montreal.



Poirier said Bell had a team working New Year’s Eve and was able to fix the patch in Ottawa.



The radio system used by Transpo and public works and environmental services is new to the City of Ottawa. It’s been running for a year and a half and will be rolled out to the police service, fire department and bylaw services over the next year, which underscores the importance for city management to understand why the leap second patch didn’t work.



Poirier was expecting an initial report Tuesday with a more comprehensive report to follow later.



jwilling@postmedia.com