Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Aug 24

Mamdani Acknowledges 400 NYC 911 Callers Were Blocked for 7 Hours by Motorola Glitch

Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Aug 24

Mamdani Acknowledges 400 NYC 911 Callers Were Blocked for 7 Hours by Motorola Glitch

Q: Did any New Yorkers face tragic consequences because their emergency calls vanished during the seven-hour 911 blackout?

It is not yet known whether the seven-hour 911 outage caused any deaths or other tragic outcomes. City officials say about 1,700 calls were affected during the disruption, but after removing duplicate calls and alarm-system calls, they estimate roughly 400 New Yorkers may have been unable to reach a dispatcher. Many other calls were rerouted to the city’s other 911 center in Brooklyn. So far, the city has not identified any confirmed case in which someone was seriously harmed or died because a 911 call failed. Officials have said the investigation is ongoing and that they are trying to determine what happened to affected callers and provide follow-up where needed. At the same time, authorities and outside observers have stressed that the full impact may be hard to reconstruct. Police sources told local media there may be no complete record of some failed calls, especially from callers who never got through at all, making it difficult to know what emergencies were involved. The outage was traced to a Motorola software update that triggered a glitch at the Bronx-based Public Safety Answering Center II. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and others have called for a full investigation and a plan to ensure backup systems work properly in the future. So the current answer is unresolved: no tragic consequences have been publicly confirmed, but officials also have not ruled them out.

1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 24

About 400 New Yorkers could not reach a 911 dispatcher during a nearly seven-hour outage last week, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday the city did not alert the public while it was happening.
A Motorola software update glitch knocked nearly 1,700 calls away from one of the city's two 911 call centers in the Bronx; officials later removed duplicate and alarm-center calls from that total.
Mamdani said the administration focused first on restoring service rather than disclosing the breakdown, adding that the system is now operating normally.
The episode was Mamdani's first public comment on the failure and has raised scrutiny of how New York handles emergency-system outages and public notification.

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The New York Times17h ago

NYC Mayor Mamdani Addresses Undisclosed 911 System Outage Caused by Motorola Glitch

Did any New Yorkers face tragic consequences because their emergency calls vanished during the seven-hour 911 blackout?

Why did city officials hide a critical 911 system failure from the public until the media forced them to confess?

How did a routine software update paralyze a massive emergency network, and is the backup system truly reliable?

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The New York Times17h ago

NYC Mayor Mamdani Addresses Undisclosed 911 System Outage Caused by Motorola Glitch

Mamdani Acknowledges 400 NYC 911 Callers Were Blocked for 7 Hours by Motorola Glitch

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