WNBC reports that the 911 tech system is overwhelmed, that people are being discouraged from calling 911 unless it is truly a real emergency. This hurricane is doing a lot of damage. Would not all the damage taking place during a massive natural disaster be considered a real emergency (911 Call System Overloaded As City Urges People to Stay Off the Roads * DNAinfo New York)
Trees are falling, the façade of one building has collapsed, one fatality has been reported, and blackouts and massive floods have been widely reported. What isn't an emergency ?
Fire breaks out at South Street Seaport ; FDNY put out the blaze. No casualties reported, according to The New York Post. * Fire officials say a heavy blaze at New York City's crowded South Street Seaport shopping spot has been put out without any injuries. Battalion Chief John Sarrocco said flames enveloped a 100-foot stretch of Pier 17, which was teeming with several hundred people when the fire broke out about 4 p.m. Saturday. (NY Post) * Fire Causes Smoke and Panic at the South Street Seaport (NYT)
Call New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at : (212) 564-7757 and ask her to demand that NYC EMS Chief Abdo Nahmod publicly release ambulance response and transit times for the Lower West Side of Manhattan. Ever since Speaker Quinn approved the Rudin family's billion dollar luxury condo conversion plan for St. Vincent's Hospital, the community has feared that it would take more time for ambulances to respond to 911 emergency calls and to transport sick or dying people to the nearest hospital. We need to know what the EMS statistics are now that St. Vincent's has been closed.
With Ambulances Stuck in Snow, New York City Abandons Emergency Response ; Leaves Residents Open To Harm And Injury ; With No Ambulance, Baby Died In Crown Heights Following Delivery.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the city’s response to the storm on Tuesday, and called the digging out of ambulances the city’s first priority. He said nearly 170 stranded ambulances had been dug out by emergency crews, with 40 more still stuck Tuesday morning. Still, the impassibility of many streets made routine ambulance runs into odysseys, sometimes with life-threatening or fatal consequences.
In East Midwood, volunteer ambulances managed to complete nine calls on Monday between getting stuck in drifts and between abandoned cars. One was to a 74-year-old woman on Lawrence Avenue who appeared to be having a stroke. Her home-health aide had called 911 at 9 a.m. on Monday, said Yakov Kornitzer, the chief of operations for the East Midwood Volunteer Ambulance company, and in the early afternoon, she finally ran to the local precinct station for help.
When the ambulance arrived at 3 p.m., it was unable to get closer than several blocks away. Two emergency workers, two paramedics and six police officers carried her on a stretcher through knee-deep snow, but by then she was unresponsive and her limbs were already flexed, indicating serious damage to her brain tissue.
“We did the best we could,” Mr. Kornitzer said. “If small cars wouldn’t have gotten stuck, we would have been able to get through.”
Source : The New York Times : Read the article, to learn about the outrageous story about the baby who died following delivery in Crown Heights : it took almost 9 hours from the time that the 911 emergency call was made until paramedics could show up to treat a woman in labor -- by the time they arrived, paramedics found that the baby had been delivered, but it was not breathing : Snow Blocks Hundreds of Ambulances From Patients
Firefighter criticises Mayor Bloomberg's draconian budget cuts to FDNY and controversial Unified Call Taker-911 dispatch and emergency call system.
On the Queens Crap blog, an anonymous FDNY firefighter has submitted a comment that draws attention to the complete failure of New York City's UCT-911 emergency call system. "Over 10 preventable fire fatalities so far because of UCT911[.] DONT LET THIS CONTINUE!!" wrote the firefighter, who submitted the anonymous comment. As far away as the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom, it was reported that, as a result of yesterday's tornado-like microburst storm, "The city's 911 switchboards were inundated with calls of injuries, a Fire Department spokesman said."
"The $2-billion project is meant to shave seconds off emergency response times, and it includes the Unified Call Taker system, which Fire Department unions have condemned, saying that it resulted in units being sent to wrong addresses."
Meanwhile, according to the following YouTube video : "Leaders of three FDNY uniformed unions joined together to speak out and detail how the Bloomberg Administration's new 911 Unified Call Taking (UCT) dispatch system is 'fatally flawed.' "
