Santa Clarita residents were still shut out of the local California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office in Newhall Wednesday.
Computer systems within the office are still suffering from outages and in-house technical difficulties, which first began Monday and affected computer operations at 122 of 188 locations statewide.
“DMV staff have been actively working to resolve the issue after our system experienced a catastrophic hardware failure which affected most of the department’s field offices across the state,” a statement from the DMV said. “The DMV anticipates that offices will come back online throughout the day.”
Officials at the Santa Clarita DMV apologized to their customers as they entered the location Wednesday morning and informed them of the outages.
“Our computers are still down; we are not servicing anybody right now,” a Santa Clarita Valley DMV official announced to a small group of patrons waiting in line.
Santa Clarita DMV representatives also passed out fliers informing customers of five “nearby” locations that are fully-operational. These locations were Palmdale, Lancaster, Simi Valley, Ventura and Goleta—all of which are at least a minimum of 30-minute drive away.
Most customers visiting the location Wednesday morning were trying to renew licenses, register cars or obtain permits, which all require functioning computer systems.
When learning of the location’s outages, a majority of the customers understood and told workers not to apologize for the larger system failure.
“I feel terrible for them, it’s not their fault,” one Santa Clarita woman leaving the DMV said. “The sad part is that they won’t even accept payments or anything, but like I said it’s not their fault.”
Some customers chose to make the trek to other DMV locations, while others chose to return at a later date when operations resume.
Despite the system failure, affected location, including Santa Clarita Valley, were still able to administer driving tests, schedule return appointments, provide assistance with paperwork and answer questions, according to a statement from the DMV.
The department encouraged customers to utilize the DMV’s website that was not impacted by the outages.
“The department wants to remind customers that DMV online services are still available at www.dmv.ca.gov and apologizes for any inconvenience this issue has caused,” the statement read.
As of Wednesday at 3 p.m., the Santa Clarita DMV was back and up and running, according to the DMV’s updated online list.
An updated statement from the DMV said that, as of 3 p.m., 21 of the impacted locations were fully operations and 17 were partially operational, meaning they could process driver license and identification card transactions.
“Staff will continue to work around the clock to get this issue resolved,” the updated DMV statement read.
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