March 31, 2004

Mother of all snafu's

City Considered Dropping Verizon Before 911 Failure, Official Says

If you can believe it, people were getting busy signals on 911 on Friday night during a system upgrade.

"The emergency system went down about 7:20 p.m. Friday for about two hours. While making service changes to a bank's telephone numbers in Brooklyn, a Verizon engineer inadvertently included numbers that are set aside to carry 911 calls. As a result, callers to 911 got busy signals."

And of course, a large city like New York could not get away from a huge error like this unscathed. A man died of a heart attack after his family tried to reach help through 911 and could not get through.

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Personally, one of my fears is needed emergency help while living in NYC. You always see ambulances trying to get through a rush hour grid lock and it taking them five minutes to move one block. People just don't respect emergency vehicles here. I imagine that a lot of people don't make it until the ambulance comes.

Just remind me that when I am old and frail, I move out of the city.

Posted by theressa at March 31, 2004 10:17 AM
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