Why did a California city just declare a state of emergency over a cyberattack on its 911 system?

Seeing 'Suisun City' trending with a cyberattack knocking out 911. How serious is this, and is anyone actually unable to reach emergency services?

Suisun City, California (a roughly 30,000-person city in the East Bay, between San Francisco and Sacramento) declared a state of emergency on Saturday, August 8, 2026, after malicious software infected and compromised its IT systems starting around 5:45am the prior morning. The attack disrupted 911 call routing, police and fire dispatch, city records, and other online services, prompting the city to shut down its entire computer network to contain the threat and preserve evidence for a federal investigation. Importantly, officials were clear that this didn't leave residents unable to reach emergency help: Suisun City's dispatchers moved to Solano County's backup dispatch center to keep taking 911 calls, and police and firefighters continued responding normally — the city explicitly stated there was no imminent threat to the public, even as many online city services and internal operations remained down. The declaration gives the city faster access to emergency support funding and lets it recoup incident-related costs. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and California's Office of Emergency Services are all involved in the investigation; as of the initial reporting, officials hadn't disclosed how the malware got in or who's responsible. It's part of a broader pattern of cyberattacks hitting local government and utility systems recently, including a separate wave of attacks on US water systems across multiple states, though no connection between those incidents and the Suisun City attack has been confirmed.