In the enterprise, it's always an emergency. If it isn't, it gets ignored, because the pipeline for getting 'non emergencies' done is constantly pre-empted for emergencies.

That said, every good process has the ability to handle exceptions. If it was truly the emergency it sounds like, he should have been able to make the change to get it up and running ASAP and then made the change properly through the normal process.

But the question of whether an "emergency" truly is, is a complicated one.