It could be until at least Saturday before vehicle inspections resume in Massachusetts. Some local businesses are feeling the impact of the outage.
Inspections have been unavailable for the last two weeks because of a cyber attack on the vendor the state hired to help run the program.
Joe Pafumi owns an inspection center in Springfield, which he said usually has 100 to 200 cars come in each week. But since the disruption began, "It's been no business since it started — zero," he said.
Pafumi said he also had to deal with a similar situation last April, when the onset of the pandemic disrupted inspections. He said there's not much he can do now except wait.
"Just kinda — gotta stand here, and waiting for a phone call to log some software or make some changes to the system — and it's zero income," he said.
Tim Andrew owns Tyre Trak Automotive, a repair shop also in Springfield. He said his garage usually inspects about 75 vehicles a week. He said he hopes to make up for lost business when the inspection system is back up and running.
"Those cars all still have to be inspected," Andrew said. "And in a perfect world, all of the ones that would have come here will still come here at some point. It evens out over the course of time. It just interrupts the flow of business."
Andrew said the backlog could make things hectic for several weeks at his business because of the greater demand for inspections.
Governor Charlie Baker said he expects the vendor to compensate inspection stations that have been inconvenienced.