Liverpool fans caused a BT exchange to crash in their rush to buy UEFA cup semi-final tickets, leaving Cheshire residents with no access to 999 services.

The telco's Warrington exchange collapsed following unprecedented demand for tickets to the Merseyside team's clash with Barcelona. About 44,000 lines were cut off between 10.00am and 10.30am on Monday 9 April.

BT engineers are still assessing what caused the outage, but a spokeswoman confirmed that there had been a problem with prioritisation software which clears lines for 999 calls. She added that this was compounded by the unexpectedly high volume of calls made to the football club that morning.

The spokeswoman explained that BT normally prepares its exchanges for events where high call volumes are expected, such as during Comic Relief, but neither the club nor BT had anticipated the excessive demand for lines.

BT said it had employed call 'gapping' as soon as the problem became apparent, limiting the number of calls coming in from other exchanges and easing the pressure on the Warrington switchboard.

A spokesman for Cheshire Police said it had attempted to alert the public to the situation using local radio and television stations. "We used our newswire links to urge members of the public requiring emergency services to contact police stations in person or to use mobile phones," he said.

BT said its account manager for the former champions was discussing the situation with Liverpool FC officials. The BT spokeswoman said it was impossible to gauge how many emergency calls had been lost, but said there were no major events in Warrington that morning.

Also published in Network News