Global tech outage: South Jersey Boy Scout troop stuck overseas due to airline impact of outage
PHILADELPHIA - A Boy Scout troop based in South Jersey is stuck overseas in the U.S. Virgin Islands following the fallout of the CrowdStrike meltdown.
Troop 122 traveled to a scout camp in St. Croix for nearly two weeks and when they got to the airport on Friday, their flights were canceled.
The members of the troop are now back at the minimalist campground.
"All our flights here are canceled. They’re telling us that we’re stuck here for another week," said Scout Master Stacey White. "Food on the island is extremely expensive. A week’s worth of food was $5,000 and I’m talking butter is $11 a pound."
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Airports, hospitals, banks, courts – you name it, the CrowdStrike outage sent a ripple effect across the entire country. Philadelphia felt the impact most acutely at the airport and 30th Street Station, while city services carried on.
White said he’s most concerned for the children who have medical needs.
"I have kids with medical needs. I don’t have medication for these kids for an extra five to seven days. So, right now, we are prioritizing an exit plan trying to get the most dire ones out first," White remarked.
White said Spirit Airlines has been challenging to communicate with and said the troop has only been offered $10 a person to cover a meal.
"The cost that we’re going to incur is going to be pretty massive, but we’ll do what we got to do. We’re resilient. We’re Boy Scouts," said White.
Experts in computer science and technology said there’s still a lot of uncertainty and some major lessons following the CrowdStrike meltdown.
Major global outage hits airlines, banks, businesses – what to know
Growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta have been reported. Here's what Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said about the issue.
"To me this just doesn’t happen. Hey, let’s hit a button and take down half the globe. To me there’s procedures. Again, why hasn’t this happened before? Why hasn’t it happened with any other company? Yes, I’ve seen Microsoft make some bad updates, but nothing to this magnitude," said Anthony Mangeluzo, President of PCS. "The end users here did nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, by having CrowdStrike on their systems, they did the right thing in theory, because it satisfies all their insurance requirements to protect their environment in most cases and no one saw this coming."
"I think that really highlights the fact that there is ongoing vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure and there need to be contingency plans in place so that, for whatever reason, if computer systems go down, there are backup plans. Backup A, Backup Plan B and so on for critical infrastructure so that we’re able to make progress with our lives and even as we’re trying to recover bringing systems back online," said Benjamin Lee, Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania.