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Still waiting for new 911 call center

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA AND WILLIAM MURPHY | Newsday Staff Writers

April 1, 2006

Four and a half years after the World Trade Center disaster cast a spotlight on the city's emergency readiness, a long-planned project to improve police, fire and medical communications through a 911 backup call center remains glaringly incomplete.

Formally known as Public Safety Answering Center 2, the new facility would handle all 911 calls should the main answering center crash because of a technical glitch, human error, or a terrorist attack. Its introduction would be part of an overall upgrade that would streamline emergency calls, authorities say.

There are other areas, though, in which the NYPD reports progress in improving how officers are sent to crime or emergency scenes. Electronic message boards have been installed at Metrotech, the current Brooklyn dispatch headquarters, to update all personnel on important information, police said.

A lieutenant platoon commander is also on site at all times, providing verbal updates in certain situations, a step put in place as a result of the Citywide Incident Management System, the post-Sept. 11 plan designed to coordinate how the FDNY and NYPD respond to acts of terrorism or other emergencies.

Those changes came after a hard review of the communications system. The 9/11 Commission's final report said the police and fire dispatch systems "were not adequately integrated into the emergency response." The report said the operators and dispatchers were the only source of information for people in the Twin Towers, but they were not informed of the gravity of what was happening at the scene.

Plans for the delayed backup dispatch center also drew attention after Sept. 11 as part of the larger communication system. A second center was first proposed more than 10 years ago. Today, officials stress the need for theory to become reality in the city considered the No. 1 terrorist target in America.

"It's just not an acceptable situation," said Peter Vallone (D-Queens), chairman of the City Council's public safety committee. "It's extremely dangerous to not have this backup center."

"It's bad enough if someone's house gets burglarized and the call does not get answered, but if we're attacked and we have no backup system, that's a disaster on a much bigger level."

Public Safety Answering Center 2 was due to be built next to police headquarters in lower Manhattan, but the events of 2001 changed that, with city officials deciding that site is too close to both headquarters and to Metrotech, the Downtown Brooklyn headquarters for the 911 system.

There have been several 911 problems since then, including a shutdown for three hours in parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island in March 2004 because of a Verizon worker's mistake.

It appears now that the answering center will be built in the Bronx, near the Bronx Psychiatric Center, as part of what the city calls the Emergency Communications Transformation Project.

"I certainly would like to see that go forward as quickly as possible," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Friday. "What you're going to have are two centers operating contemporaneously. So if something happens to one center, the other center can pick up the calls, pick up the whole volume."

The Bloomberg administration has appropriated $1.3 billion to revamp the 911 system.

Included in the plan is an upgrade of Metrotech, with fire dispatchers moved there from the five borough facilities out of which they now operate.

The money will also allow the city to better streamline the 12 million calls placed to 911 dispatchers each year, with police, fire and EMS dispatchers operating on the same computer system and eliminating what the city says is a delay each time a caller is re-routed to a dispatcher from a 911 operator or is asked to repeat information.

But David Rosenzweig, president of the Fire Alarm Dispatchers Benevolent Association, said consolidating 911 operations at Metrotech is a big mistake.

"I don't think that building could withstand a terrorist attack," said Rosenzweig, who thinks the money would be better spent improving the borough facilities that now house fire dispatchers.

Authorities say construction of the second answering center could start as early as next year.