Officials: NYC 911 system to be overhauled
Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks to New York City religious leaders as they attend Bloomberg's annual interfaith breakfast at the New York Public Libary at 42nd Street. (Dec. 30, 2011) Credit: Craig Ruttle
Valuable seconds will be saved by 911 callers because of a major overhaul of the city's outdated system, officials announced Thursday.
The streamlined system puts 1,500 call takers and dispatchers with the NYPD, FDNY and Emergency Medical Dispatch on the same floor, all using the same technology at a single Brooklyn call center.
"If you were to pick up the phone and call and say, 'Somebody's holding me up, I just fell down the stairs and broke a leg, and by the way, there's a fire,' one call will get you the response that you need," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference with police and fire officials. "That's exactly the kind of coordination that we need."
Previously, 911 operators had to take more steps to try to determine a caller's address. The new system, part of a $2.1-billion upgrade that began in 2004, immediately maps out the person's location.
That's critical because most of the 30,000 calls made each day come from cellphones, officials said.
The new center can handle 50,000 calls an hour. A a backup system is being built in the Bronx and could open by 2015.
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