COLUMBIA, S.C. — A global tech outage on Friday frustrated some local businesses and their customers, forcing them to close their doors.
Customers at a local First Citizens Bank were met with a sign informing them that the lobby was closed this morning. Customers said they were told there were issues. A worker said the bank faced problems due to the tech outage.
"I've been coming here a long time and never had a problem like that before," said customer Mattie Young. "People have to work, people have things they have to do and that’s not good."
It affected a number of local businesses as well, while it's unclear right now exactly how many had issues due to the outage. The GPS trackers for the work vehicles were down for Easy Electrical Solutions, says owner Katielynn O'Toole. That made it difficult to know where workers were on jobs and notify customers of their arrival.
"We were in the dark in our office," said O'Toole. "We didn't know where our crews were. We didn't know how long the jobs were taking."
She says they also faced issues with their payment systems.
"Getting payment right on site is really important, because some of those payments can be delayed, which then does not fund our business to operate," said O'Toole.
The outage also affected hospitals like Prisma Health.
"Prisma Health’s Information Technology Support team became aware of a global issue with CrowdStrike," spokesperson Tammie Epps said in a statement. "The team quickly identified the affected servers and resolved the issue by 6:15 a.m. All systems are working normally. The team will continue to monitor."
Lexington Medical Center said it was not affected by the outage.