NYC to Expand Emergency Notification System
After what New York City authorities are calling a successful terror drill over the weekend at the World Trade Center site, the city is moving to expand a “Notify NYC” system that alerts residents and businesses by e-mail, text message and telephone to emergencies either city wide or in a targeted area or borough.
New York City is moving to expand a “Notify NYC” system that alerts residents and businesses by e-mail, text message and telephone to emergencies, including terror attacks, either city wide or in a targeted area or borough.
Often called “reverse 911″ the system has been used or tested successfully in a number of other cities across the country as a way to move residents to safety in the face of natural calamities — hurricanes, flooding or dam collapse and is also intended to work in terror or other “man made” emergencies, officials say.
In New York it has been successfully used, city officials say, in a pilot program across four neighborhoods. It was launched following the former Deustche Bank fire right off the site of Ground Zero. In that case residents did not know what was the source of smoke, or whether they needed to take shelter or evacuate.
