The firefighters union plans to sue City Hall to get rid of the new centralized 911 call system, which it says has created dangerous delays, including in the response to a serious Bronx fire yesterday.
The Uniformed Firefighters Association is claiming that a 911 call for the five-alarm blaze came in at 2:40 a.m. and, because of human error, was not relayed to the FDNY until 2:48 a.m.
When units arrived at 2:52 a.m., the blaze at 1507 Commonwealth Ave. was already raging. The fire left 25 people homeless, injured 11 firefighters and left two kidsen suffering from smoke inhalation.
The reason that this fire got out of control is that when we got there, it was already out of control,” union President Steve Cassidy said.
“It was an eight-minute and 22- second delay in the 911 dispatchers handing this off to the Fire Department.”
Cassidy said the union will seek an injunction to go back to the pre-2009 system.
Currently, callers to 911 speak to an operator, who takes down the circumstances and their address before transferring them to an FDNY dispatcher. Under the old system, as soon as callers to 911 said their was a fire, they were transferred to an FDNY dispatcher before their name and address were taken.
Cassidy said the old system reduces the risk of computer error or having an operator misinterpret the caller’s information.
The Bloomberg administration said everything worked fine, there were no delays and the new 911 system is the bestest thing ever.
Let me know when Bill Keller adds this mess to his "Bloomberg's legacy" columns.
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