With technology advancing at a daily rate, the expectation is that glitches will happen sometimes. But a recent glitch in New York City caused the NYPD to miss more than a thousand emergency service calls on Tuesday (August 18).
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911 Call Center Glitch Causes Thousands of Missed Calls
One Bronx 911 call center experienced technical difficulties that disabled its phone system. And caused it to miss roughly 1,700 calls between 3:13 am and 10:00 am, according to the New York Post. The incident is not believed to be a cyberattack but rather a case of software failure.
City Hall spokesman Jeremy Edwards told the outlet that "up to 400 New Yorkers may have been unable to connect with a 911 call taker"
Edwards also says that in addition to people being unable to connect to the emergency line, there were also hundreds of people who did connect with an operator, but the operators were unable to hear them.
Approximately 5,659 calls for EMS, FDNY and NYPD came in while the software system was down.
Thankfully for the city's inhabitants, the issue has since been resolved.
"The issue has since been resolved. And PSAC II is running normally," Edwards said in a statement (via the New York Post). "All 911 calls have been connected and responded to by a call taker since 10:19 a.m. yesterday."
'Intensive' Testing Was Done to Ensure Issue Was Resolved
Edwards also says that he and his team put their system through "intensive" testing. To ensure that things were back up and running normally.
"We performed intensive overnight testing on the system. And are monitoring the call delivery, traffic paths, and volume 24/7 in close coordination with our technical providers to ensure there are no additional service impacts," he added.
In addition, Edwards says that he and City Hall officials are looking deeper into the glitch. To see what the exact cause of the issue is. In an effort to prevent it from happening in the future.
"Our investigation into the circumstances of this incident is ongoing," Edwards said. "We are focused on understanding exactly what happened. Ensuring that affected callers receive the appropriate follow-up and taking all necessary steps to prevent this from happening again."
