A computer outage at state Department of Motor Vehicles headquarters in Sacramento frustrated customers Tuesday with canceled appointments, long lines and limited services at dozens of branches including three in the South Bay.
The Torrance, Hawthorne and Inglewood branches — as well as nearby Compton and Long Beach offices — were among more than 100 DMV offices knocked out of commission Tuesday after the agency’s computer system crashed the day before. Officials said the “catastrophic” hardware failure responsible for the outage should be resolved this morning.
A statement on the DMV website Tuesday said the “major computer outage” left branches around the state offline, and crews worked through Monday night to rebuild the systems in the 105 affected offices. Officials in Sacramento said the systems were not hacked.
Without computers, the offices were unable to process most services, although driving tests were unaffected and online services were still available. Employees were still able to answer questions, hand out forms and reschedule appointments for customers.
The outage was announced in a Tweet from the agency Monday afternoon. Twitter users expressed their frustration with the outage, and some raised concerns that it would impact people trying to get an ID so they could register to vote before the Monday deadline.
A steady trickle of confused customers approached the doors to the Torrance DMV on Tuesday, only to be turned away by a worker standing behind a cart set up to block the front doors.
The lack of service left Jeremy Miller with a potentially expensive problem. Miller tried to register his car in the middle of moving to a new home, and the registration sticker for his license plate was sent to the wrong address.
Now the Torrance resident is driving his car with what look like expired plates. A DMV employee told him over the phone Monday that could result in a $1,500 fine if he’s caught, but said he could clear up the problem if he went to the office in person. When he called back Tuesday, he was told there wouldn’t be a problem processing his registration, even though systems were down.
“I called them on the phone, they told me to come down here, I came down here and now they can’t do it,” he said.
Miller said he’s headed out of town for the rest of the week, and he’s stuck driving a car with out-of-date tags. His only other option is to wait for the registration sticker to come in the mail, but that can take upward of four weeks, he said.
“I don’t know what to do. We’ll try again, obviously, because waiting four to six weeks isn’t a solution,” he said.
Julie Lapper was similarly unhappy with the computer outage. Lapper made an appointment to renew her license two months ago, but she was turned away when she showed up Tuesday to finish the process.
Lapper, whose license will expire this week, said there was no warning that she wouldn’t be able to renew her license Tuesday.
“It’s really annoying because it’s my lunch hour,” Lapper said. “They didn’t let me know, so I had to take time off work to get here and now I’ve got to come back Friday.”
Staff writers Jessica Kwong and Alma Fausto contributed to this report
