‘CALL’AMITY: Yesterday’s Post exposed the failings of 911 during Sandy. (
)
Mayor Bloomberg yesterday insisted that the city’s 911 system “functioned perfectly” during Hurricane Sandy — despite evidence of unanswered calls, clueless operators and deaths of people who couldn’t get help in time.
“The technology functioned perfectly,” Bloom-berg bizarrely said yesterday during a question-and-answer session. “Are you ever going to have enough operators to take all the calls when all of a sudden, everybody’s calling? No, of course not.
“We spent $1 billion to make sure we had the right technology.”
Bloomberg’s defense of the system came in response to a Post story, based on dozens of call records and examples, exposing 911’s inability to handle the crisis.
The 911 system is supposed to be able to handle 50,000 calls per hour, according to official claims, and there were about 20,000 calls per hour when Sandy hit on Oct. 29.
Hizzoner even accused people of clogging the lines with non-emergency calls — as their houses filled with water.
“If you call 911 and it’s not an emergency you’re taking away from that operator the ability to answer someone else’s need, which may, in fact, be life threatening,” he said.
“The technology we put together so we direct the emergency needs to the right places worked perfectly.”
One Midland Beach, Staten Island, resident — who was scolded by a 911 operator for not evacuating even as floodwaters approached his neck — might disagree with the mayor’s assessment.
“You need to look for a raft or something to get floating because if the water’s already up to your chest and it’s a one-story house, where are you going to go?,” the operator said, records show.
“Well, I was hoping you might help with that,” the distressed man replied.
Moments later, he told the operator he heard yelling outside.
“Yeah, OK. Yell back. Let them know that you’re there. Bye-bye,” the operator said, then hung up.
He was eventually rescued by a roving boat manned by first responders.
The resident called Bloomberg’s remarks yesterday “absurd.”
“It certainly was not working perfectly,” he told The Post. “I think Bloomberg’s out of touch again.”
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly yesterday defended the operators’ performance stating that some walked to work — like millions of other people.
“We had operators come in on their days off, who walked to Metrotech. We had shuttles. They slept on cots. They worked 16-hour tours. This was a catastrophic situation you simply couldn’t staff for,” Kelly said.
Bloomberg also said the problems should just be chalked up to living in a big city.
“People are just going to have to understand that if you have 8 million people in the city, you cannot have 8 million operators where you would get one right away,” he said.