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Q&A

Feliz questions number of alarm calls affected before 6:40 a.m.

New York City Council · Sep 9, 2026 · starts 0:46:48 · 2 min

Feliz asks how many alarm calls had issues before the first ticket. Gelobter doesn't have the specific number but notes about 1,000 alarm calls were affected during the entire disruption period. She explains alarm calls use auto-dialers that repeat until connected, which may explain the volume increase noticed.

Oswald J. Feliz

When the first ticket was placed?

Lisa Gelobter

Before 6.40 a.m.?

Oswald J. Feliz

Yes, or by 6.40 a.m.

Lisa Gelobter

I don't have that stacked.

Oswald J. Feliz

Would you say more than five, more than ten?

Lisa Gelobter

Well, we do know, sorry, in this.

Lisa Gelobter

In the entire disruption period, there were 1,696 calls.

Lisa Gelobter

742 of them were 911.

Lisa Gelobter

So if we subtract that, there would be 619.

Lisa Gelobter

let's call it about a thousand alarm calls that came in in that disruption period.

Lisa Gelobter

I could not tell you how many came in before the 6 a.m.

Lisa Gelobter

Notice.

Lisa Gelobter

I will also say that alarm calls are also on auto dialers oftentimes.

Lisa Gelobter

So that they will recall and recall and repeat recall until they reach somebody.

Lisa Gelobter

So I think that might be also why.

Lisa Gelobter

I think that was one of the things that was noticed with the alarm call numbers incoming had gone up.

Lisa Gelobter

And again, I think that that would be due to calls coming in.

Lisa Gelobter

They're not.

Lisa Gelobter

Being able to hear folks and therefore the auto calls continued.

Oswald J. Feliz

Right, but alarm calls are treated as regular 911 calls, right?

Lisa Gelobter

They are treated as emergency services calls, yeah.

Oswald J. Feliz

Okay, so I just don't know if I agree with the framing, the framing that says that basically you learned about the issue, that there was an outage by 930.

Oswald J. Feliz

It seems like there was enough information for us to determine that there was some type of problem by 640 a.m.

Lisa Gelobter

So there is no doubt that we understood that there was some time, and we were, in fact, working on trying to diagnose what the issue was as early as 6 a.m., in fact.

Oswald J. Feliz

Right, yeah.

Oswald J. Feliz

Okay, but the framing that you learned about the outage by 9.30, I don't know, that just doesn't seem accurate.

Lisa Gelobter

The 911, that it was affecting 911 services, is when we learned at 9.30.

Lisa Gelobter

There was no question that starting at 6 a.m.

Lisa Gelobter

And then escalating from there, we understood the impact around alarm calls.