‘We’re so used to relying on technology.’ Hospitals, airlines, agency operations around New England hampered by software outage.

The global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air on Friday. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the cause of the outage was not an apparent security incident or cyberattack — and that a fix was on the way.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on X. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration said local police, fire, and EMS are operating and responding to emergencies.

”Various City services were impacted by the global technology service outage that started [Thursday] night. The City encourages residents to call ahead before attempting to access services at municipal buildings,’’ said Wu’s office in a statement. ”Despite the current cyber outage, the City’s first responder agencies, including BPD, Fire and EMS, remain operational and able to respond to emergencies.”

During the outage overnight “Boston EMS responded to 99 calls during the outage utilizing back-up procedures,” the statement said. “311 is using a manual tracking system to track cases until service is restored. We will provide additional updates as they become available.”

Later on Friday, Greg McCarthy, the city’s chief of information security, said city departments first noticed the issue around midnight Friday morning, but that all critical systems have remained stable.

Despite some impact to constituent-facing services, 911 and all emergency response services have been available.

“We’ve been all hands on deck, sort of triaging the impacted city services,” said Alex Lawrence, the city’s chief people officer. “We put a banner on our website letting constituents know to call in advance of [coming to] city buildings, and for the most part, our departments have been able to serve constituents and take calls, but there we’ve had to use a ton of workarounds for some of our internal systems.”

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said early Friday she was closely monitoring developments.

“I’m closely monitoring the global CrowdStrike incident, and our team is working to assess and mitigate the impact on Massachusetts,” Healey said via X. “We’re in contact with public safety, health care, and transportation officials, but residents may experience delays while we resolve the outage.”

President Biden has been briefed on the CrowdStrike outage and his team is in touch with the tech firm and impacted entities, a White House official said.

In Massachusetts, the local hospitals that MGB operates include Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, McLean Hospital, Salem Hospital, and hospitals on both Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

“Mass General Brigham remains open to provide care to patients with urgent health concerns in our clinics and emergency departments, and we continue to care for all patients currently receiving care in our hospital,” the organization said.

MGB said it was working to fix the problem.

Megan Mahoney, 29, of Dorchester, a nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s neuroscience unit, said she woke up Friday morning, heard about the outage, and went to the hospital to the check on colleagues, spending about four hours there.

“It was controlled chaos,” said Mahoney, a seven-year veteran at the hospital. “We’re getting a handle on it but it is still very disruptive to patient care.”

“We’re so used to relying on technology,” she added. “No one saw this coming. Nurses are what keep patients safe right now. We’re relying on their training and experience.”

The Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, meanwhile, encouraged the public to seek emergency care if necessary during the outage.

“MHA is working closely with the Department of Public Health and the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals to convene hospitals throughout the day, assess how this global disruption may be affecting their operations, and address any supports they need,” said Michael Sroczynski, the group’s executive vice president and general counsel, in a statement.

At Armstrong Ambulance, which provides EMS service to 13 Massachusetts communities, the system went down around 1:30 am, and a “blue screen of death” appeared on computers, said CEO Richard Raymond.

“When the computer went down, we had to write down addresses using pen and paper, call the ambulance and tell them where to go, and keep the paper to enter when the system goes back up,” Raymond said.

In New Hampshire, Dartmouth Health locations were experiencing interruptions of multiple systems, according to a spokesperson, who said efforts were being made to minimize patient disruptions for patients.

911 operators in the Granite State reported early Friday that they could see incoming calls but not answer them, officials said. Backup processes were implemented right away, unanswered calls were returned, and the system was fully restored by about 6:15 a.m., officials said.

Air travel was affected, too.

Some airlines operating at Logan International Airport were also contending with delays because of the outage, but Massport reported early Friday that the airport was open and operating as usual.

“Some airlines at Logan are being affected by a computer outage currently, which is causing delays,” Massport spokesman Benjamin Cawley wrote in an e-mail around 6:45 a.m.

According to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, 6,893 flights “within, into, or out of” the US had been delayed and 2,340 US flights canceled Friday as of 2 p.m. Friday.

Motorists had their commutes affected as well, with some of their favorite morning drive programs temporarily unavailable, including those on WEEI and Magic 106.7, according to a spokesperson for broadcast company Audacity.

Operations at the Registry of Motor Vehicles were also hampered by the outage.

”The Registry has canceled customer service center appointments before 12 noon today as many workstations at centers are not operational,” MassDOT said in a statement.

The agency said credit card payments couldn’t be made the RMV site Friday morning and there was only limited capacity to answer calls to the agency’s contact center. Vehicle inspections also were halted, the agency said around 9 a.m., but road tests are taking place as scheduled.

The problems largely spared the electrical grid. The state’s two biggest utilities, Eversource and National Grid, said they weren’t seeing impacts to customers Friday.

Banking systems weren’t so fortunate.

“Due to a third-party, global, industry-wide issue, certain online functionality may be intermittently slow or unavailable,” said Charles Schwab on its website. “We’re actively monitoring the issue. Phone services may be disrupted and hold times may be longer than usual.”

Additional financial institutions including Metro Credit Union, Leader Bank, TD Bank, and Cambridge Savings Bank also reported problems.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report, which will be updated. Patricia Wen, Emily Sweeney, Dana Gerber, Shannon Larson, Amanda Gokee, Jon Chesto, Camilo Fonseca, Mike Bailey, Austin Byrdsell, Aidan Ryan, Stella Tannenbaum, Adam Piore, and Thomas Lee of the Globe Staff and the Globe’s Washington D.C. bureau contributed.

John R. Ellement can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @JREbosglobe. Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected].