When Will Bloomberg Be Held Accountable For Failed 911 System?

Another 911 system "glitch" yesterday:

In the midst of a chaotic day of repeated 911 glitches, an EMS system reboot and a temporary return to pen and paper, it took more than an hour to get an ambulance to a 96-year-old Queens, N.Y., woman.

Too bad someone close to Irene Boylan didn’t have the cell phone numbers for New York's police and fire commissioners.

A relative pushed his way into Boylan’s room at the Calvary Baptist Church Senior Houses in Jamaica just after 1 p.m. on Monday and found the woman facedown between two beds. A staff member called 911 at 1:17 p.m. to request an ambulance for the woman, who fell and “was unable to get up,” records show.

But an ambulance didn’t arrive until 2:27 p.m., a wait of an hour and 10 minutes.
 
“How would they feel if it was their mother lying on the floor?” said Doris Crutch, 71, the wife of Boylan’s nephew. “What if it was their wife, their mother, their grandmother, their sister?”

Last week, there was a 33-minute delay in getting an ambulance to an intern who collapsed before an event with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Quinn called Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly on their cell phones before the job was upgraded to a priority.

The furious family member pointed a finger at the city’s troubled emergency call system.“We’re hearing it was a problem with the 911 system,” Crutch said. “If that’s a problem, they need to do something about it.”

Bloomberg was off river rafting with Governor Cuomo and could not be reached for comment.

We had all better hope that nothing major happens in the next six months before we (I hope!) get another mayor in City Hall who will fix this mess that Bloomberg created and refuses to acknowledge.

 

God help us if we have anything like Sandy or worse in that time before the next mayor comes in and fixes this system.

 

The 911 call system cannot handle a normal Monday in July.

 

You can imagine what would happen if there was a serious emergency with tens of thousands of calls all coming in at the same time. 

 

Finally, I'll ask one more time:

 

When does Bloomberg get held accountable for this mess?

 

When do the members of the elite corporate press stop sucking up to Bloomberg and hold him accountable for this?

 

Can you imagine if such a thing like this were happening under Dinkins?

 

What would Bill Keller be saying about that?