Blue Screen Of Death Hits the North Coast: St. Joseph’s Is Having Issues, But Mad River Hospital Remains Online

Screenshot of a blue screen of death as captured on a Windows Server machine with the faulty CrowdStrike driver installed. [By Microsoft Corporation – Jonathan Flusser on X (direct link), Public Domain] 

If you’ve ever had to bring your computer back from the brink of the ever-feared “Blue Screen of Death” you know how potentially debilitating a computer crash can be. Across the globe, the terrifyingly frozen blue screen has derailed business, travel and everyday functions for computer-reliant systems from Humboldt to, well, nearly anywhere you can think of.  The international technology snafu resulted from a single defect in an overnight cybersecurity update, which, when coupled with computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system, causes a computer system to stop functioning has sent shockwaves through the digital landscape, resulting in the disruption of critical internet services worldwide. 

The root of the issue was identified by CrowdStrike, a leading cybersecurity company catering to global giants, which attributed the widespread outages to a flawed software update rather than a deliberate cyberattack or state-sponsored interference. As explained by a spokesperson from the American Hospital Association to Axios, several U.S. hospitals and health care systems encountered disruptions, prompting federal authorities to assess the potential ramifications on government entities.  Humboldt was no exception, with Providence St, Joseph Hospital, which relies on software called “Epic” being hit by the paralyzing software update. 

Rainy weather at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka. [2023 Photo by Ryan Hutson]

Providence explained that the problem is negatively impacting their ability to provide services, explaining that “other clinical applications and workstations continue to be impacted, and our IT teams are working to restore these services as soon as possible. Patient safety and access to care is always the top priority at Providence,” and added that the hospital will provide updates. 

North of St. Joes, officials at Mar River Hospital in Arcata assured us that they are still up and running, and have not been impacted by the debilitating computer glitch. 

Larry Wood, Safety Officer and Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for Mad River Community Hospital said by phone Friday night that the hospital was not affected.. Wood explained that Mad River Hospital was not impacted by the CrowdStrike software glitch. Wood said, “We are fully functioning in all depts – anyone has an emergency, please don’t hesitate to come in.”

Wood wanted to make it clear that the hospital doors were open. “We are ready and willing to assist our neighboring hospitals where we can,” said Wood. “We are up and running in all areas. However we can help, we are here to serve the community,” he said, as he explained that if needed, Mad River could assist St. Joes if it were needed during the temporary technology breakdown.  

[Photo from madriverhospital.com]

Some government agencies in Humboldt County have been affected also. The Humboldt County library for instance. They reported early Saturday, “County Information Technicians have been able to restore most government computers to full function, including those that serve you at the Libraries. Blue Lake and Trinidad Libraries are the last – they are getting attention today and their computers will be working sometime this afternoon.”

According to the Times Standard, 911 was not affected in Humboldt County. However, “Cati Gallardo, spokesperson for Humboldt County said in an email Friday some computer systems were affected. The IT department restored services at the Sherriff’s Dispatch and the jail to be fully operational Thursday night and is working with other departments to get all systems fully functional, with critical services prioritized, she said.”

According to reporting by Axios, this digital collapse might not be remedied immediately for  those it has impacted. experts anticipate that affected organizations may remain offline for an extended period of time, according to , possibly stretching into days. The incident, marked by the emergence of the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death,” prevented users from accessing their computers, effectively barricading them from their systems until an alternative access route could be established.

CEO of CrowdStrike, George Kurtz, shed light on the predicament, attributing the blue screen to a software glitch embedded in an update for the company’s endpoint security product, with Windows systems bearing the brunt of the impact. Despite CrowdStrike’s recommendations to tackle the issue, the manual nature of the resolution process, according to reporting by Axios, has posed a notable challenge. Omer Grossman, CIO at Israeli cyber company CyberArk, emphasized the arduous nature of the task in his correspondence, stating, “Because the endpoints have crashed — the Blue Screen of Death — they cannot be updated remotely, and the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This is expected to be a process that will take days.”

For those who are impacted, like many airports across the world, for example, the correction could be as simple as a reboot, however for other companies and affected systems, it could take longer.  According to a recent article by the Associated Press, “The breadth of the outages highlighted the fragility of a digitized world dependent on just a few providers for key computing services.” The article counts hospitals, airports, and “governments” as some of the worst impacted, alongside other troubling instances of tech failure such as the Australian news network Sky News, which was off the air temporarily as a result of the failed digital update. 

While going into specific examples of chaos around the world, the article also states clearly, “It was not the result of hacking or a cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike, which apologized and said a fix was on the way.”