Chair Feliz details August outage timeline and public notification failure
Feliz describes the outage as starting at 3 a.m. and blocking calls for seven hours. He demands answers on what went wrong, why the update wasn't tested, why backup systems failed, and why the public was only notified seven hours later through the media rather than directly by the city.
When people are facing an emergency, they should not have to wonder whether a 911 call will go through.
Reportedly, the outage was a result of updates that were made to service in the Bronx.
The updates went live at 3 a.m.
And they basically started blocking calls for seven hours between 3 a.m.
And 10 a.m.
The city must explain what happened, including what went wrong, why wasn't the update tested before and after to ensure that it was working,
what happened to the backup systems, which were supposed to reroute calls to the Brooklyn Center and instead allowed nearly 1,700 calls to go unanswered, and what steps will be taken to ensure that something like this never, ever happens again.
We also want to know, and this is equally important, why wasn't the public notified that the 911 system was not working?
Why did they only get notified seven hours later and they had to learn about this through the media rather than hearing about this directly from the city?
People don't call 911 for fun.
They call when their safety is at risk, when they're in imminent danger, when they need immediate help from our police or fire department or medical services.
Technology can sometimes fail us.
We all know that.
Technology can sometimes fail us.
But failing to properly inform the public about something as important as the 911 system being out, that is not a technical glitch.
That is a human choice, an unacceptable one.
New Yorkers deserve to know when the 911 system is experiencing an outage so they can think about alternative ways of seeking help.