Emergency Alert System Glitch Prompts City Action
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
City officials are preparing to correct mistakes in a new emergency alert system, after an emergency e-mail message sent to New Yorkers reported an incorrect address for a crane collapse in front of the Goldman Sachs construction site near ground zero.
The city’s first alert, sent out by e-mail on Friday, incorrectly identified the site as 200 Vesey St. An hour later, a follow-up notice corrected the mistake, identifying the site as 200 Murray St.
The address error could be the first of several bumps for the pilot notification program Mr. Bloomberg launched on December 4, fulfilling a campaign promise.
City officials have said they have concerns about undelivered notification messages and alerts that misinform the public.
A deputy mayor in charge of the alert program, Edward Skyler, said errors such as the mistaken address must be prevented from happening in the future.
“There is no room for mistakes,” he said yesterday during an interview with The New York Sun. The city is experimenting with text messaging, e-mail messages, and phone calls to find the most effective way to communicate with the public in an emergency, Mr. Skyler said. The pilot program will cost $600,000.
A longtime resident of Lower Manhattan who was in her neighborhood during the attacks of September 11, 2001, and during a fire at the former Deutsche Bank building in August, Patricia Moore, said she was not upset the city sent out the wrong address for the collapse, or that she received multiple alerts about the same incident. Since the fire, residents of Lower Manhattan have pressed even harder for a notification system to keep people informed during emergencies.
“They’re working out the bugs, which is a good thing,” Ms. Moore said. “I think it’s better than not receiving any notification at all, which I have lived through.”
A City Council member who represents Lower Manhattan, Alan Gerson, said the Bloomberg administration’s reliance on “high-tech” solutions is problematic because such solutions exclude some residents, such as older people and the disabled.
“It will not work citywide and it’s insufficient for neighborhoods,” he said. “We need to have low-tech as well as high-tech plans.”
