Washington State Ferries (WSF), which provide service around the Puget Sound in western Washington, suffered significant staff shortages over the weekend, officials said. And on Monday, the service’s website went down for several hours. Sterling said that about 28 workers called in sick on Oct. 9, which he described as not unusual. However, there were no substitutes to replace them, which State Ferries spokesperson Ian Sterling described as “pretty unprecedented,” local media reported. “There is no one to fill in,” Sterling said, according to goSkagit. Between Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, about 140 sailings were canceled due to the system’s staffing shortages, officials said. In a Twitter post on Oct. 8, WSF wrote that “although COVID-19 restrictions have not allowed us to hire or train new recruits at the same rate as prior to the pandemic, we’ve brought on 100+ new crewmembers in 2021.” It added: “We used to hire new crews …