City Aims To Launch Program To Improve Crisis Communication

By GRACE RAUH, Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 20, 2007

The Bloomberg administration is aiming to adopt a host of new ways to communicate with New Yorkers during a crisis.

Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler said yesterday that the city hopes to launch a pilot program for a text-messaging notification system by the end of 2007 and a pilot program for a reverse 9-1-1 emergency notification system by early 2008.

By mid-October, the pilot program for an e-mail notification system is set to begin in Lower Manhattan.

At a City Council hearing on how the city communicates with residents during an emergency, Mr. Skyler said he is "skeptical" of the text-messaging technology. New York's telecommunications infrastructure "isn't as reliable as we'd like," he said, which could lead to other problems during an emergency.

"If I sign up for a service and I'm in a situation where I feel that I should be getting information from government and I don't get a message, then I might not do anything," he said. "I might not turn on the television. I might just go about my business and then maybe walk into harm's way.'

Mayor Bloomberg promised during his 2005 campaign to work with cell phone carriers to provide emergency notifications and information through text messaging.

Lower Manhattan residents have said that in the hours immediately following the outbreak of a fire at the former Deutsche Bank building near ground zero in August, they wanted information from the city that would have assuaged their fears and told them how to stay safe.