ROSEVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Kennidi Beatie made her third frustrating trip this week to a California Department of Motor Vehicles office on Wednesday, only to be told again that the DMV's computers were still down and her life was still in limbo.
Her purse containing her driver's license and checkbook was stolen from her burglarized vehicle on Saturday, and her bank accounts remain frozen because she had no driver's license to prove her identity.
Others told similar stories as they waited out what officials called a "perfect storm" of simultaneous hard-drive failures that caused a computer outage crippling two-thirds of DMV offices this week.
The department's disaster recovery systems were not designed to handle such severe failures over a short period of time, DMV spokesman Jaime Garza said in an email.
"I thought I'd just give it a whirl every day. Sooner or later they'll have to work, I guess," Beatie said as she waited in line outside the DMV office in Roseville, 20 miles northeast of Sacramento. "I'm at, like, a standstill, so that's frustrating of course."
Garza said experts were working to repair the system and get office functions back online. But he did not provide an estimate for completing the work.
DMV officials have said the computers were not hacked or targeted. It was not immediately clear what caused the disks to fail.
"Industry experts would characterize the events experienced in the DMV system, over the past few days, as 'the perfect storm,' and this is a series of events that the department has not previously witnessed," Garza said.
More than 100 field offices remained hampered by the outage, unable to process vehicle registrations and, in most cases, driver's license matters.
The offices did provide road tests for drivers and scheduled appointments for people unable to accomplish their DMV business. Online services were still functioning.
People lined up well before the Roseville office opened Wednesday because the DMV said things would be back to normal. Many were upset that systems were not working when the doors opened.
Garza said 122 of the DMV's 188 offices that serve the public were affected. Twenty-one were fully functional by Wednesday, and services were partially restored at 16 others.
While the latest outage began Monday, some offices also had trouble Friday because of a scheduled security upgrade, Garza said.
Lisa Harris' husband attempted to update the couple's vehicle registration twice, on Friday and Monday, without success as the family tries to avoid a steeper penalty that they expect will top $100.
They recently moved, and the registration due in August went to their old address. Lisa Harris left the Roseville DMV office Wednesday after failing a third time.
"Very, very frustrating," she said, criticizing the DMV's lack of communication about when the computers would be working again. "It's a guessing game, and then they're not telling anyone and you're standing in line, so it's just frustrating."
Customers facing late fees as a result of the outage can fill out a form or write a letter requesting that the fee be waived, Garza said.
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Cooper reported from Sacramento, California.
