City officials are facing intense scrutiny from lawmakers after admitting the administration concealed a nearly two-hour 911 system disruption that occurred in August. The revelation came as officials, including Lisa Gelobter, commissioner of the Office of Technology and Innovation, were being questioned by the City Council on Wednesday about the August outage.
During the grilling, Gelobter disclosed that the 911 system had also experienced a separate, 110-minute disruption in May that had not been publicly announced. This admission stunned Councilman Oswald Feliz, chair of the public safety committee, who characterized the decision to withhold information as "outrageous" and "detrimental."
Feliz emphasized the severity of the May outage, noting that it prevented a dozen text messages seeking help from reaching emergency services. "If people are texting, they are in imminent danger — a fire, medical," Feliz stated, pressing for details on the cause of the outage and the rationale behind the lack of public notification.
The August incident, which occurred after an overnight software update, blocked nearly 1,700 individuals from contacting first responders between 3 a.m. and 10 a.m. Gelobter conceded that her office took nearly seven hours to determine the full scope of the system failures, only realizing the extent of the problem when an NYPD staffer discovered the widespread outage and alerted OTI.
Councilwoman Joann Ariola criticized the administration's handling of the situation, stating, "People could have died because you were not doing your job." She questioned why the public was not notified, adding, "Systems break down; we know that but [the public] could not get help if it needed it. It should have been addressed much sooner."
News of the August system failure initially surfaced in the media, and it was also revealed that OTI failed to notify the city's Office of Emergency Management about the significant disruptions. Gelobter attempted to defend her agency's response, explaining that while they were uncertain about the exact issues for the first four hours of the outage, approximately 70% of calls were still being answered. She also stated that no serious injuries had been reported as a direct result of the outage.
Gelobter indicated that as the administration continues its analysis, officials "will try to make a list of all the stakeholders who should be notified in the future." She acknowledged that the review process was not yet complete and that follow-ups with hundreds of callers affected by the outage had not yet occurred in the weeks following the incident. The public was not informed about the May outage, which, despite being smaller in scale than the August event, still impacted emergency communications.