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Officials Argue Numbers in Brooklyn and Staten Island 911 Outage
"It would appear that call volumes were normal in terms of dispatch, in terms of emergency," Bloomberg told a press conference before marching in the 183rd Annual Greek Independence Day Parade in Manhattan.
But that contradicted what Gino Menchini, commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommuni- cations, told reporters after the press conference.
Menchini said there was about a 12 percent drop in calls to 911 during the two-hour failure compared to the same time period last year. Emergency operators get about 1,800 calls an hour on a typical Friday evening, officials said.
A Verizon engineer mistakenly switched 911 calls to a client's number during a routine software upgrade. Service was down in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and, for a short time, The Bronx, officials said.
The city's backup system didn't kick in because the calls were rerouted - making it appear as though the system was working.
Bloomberg questioned whether the backup systems were part of the problem. "The trouble is the more backups you have, the less reliability you have," the mayor said.
But Menchini said having multiple backup systems can be helpful. "We have a huge amount of redundancy in our network with Verizon. It's been very carefully engineered and it serves us very well," Menchini said.
Verizon officials are expected to give a full report to city officials today about what went wrong - and what changes are being made to prevent further problems.
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