New York City – A warning would have been welcome when an Air Force jet flew unannounced over the New York Harbor weeks ago and sent frightened workers in lower Manhattan into a tizzy. (When it turned out the flyover was for an expensive photo op, the White House official who approved it resigned from his post over the scandal.)
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On Monday it seemed it might happen again – but with advance warning from a little-known city service. Downtown New Yorkers received two messages via email and text from Notify NYC, an emergency public communication system of New York City, alerting them that a military plane had requested to fly a plane over the Hudson River around 10:30 a.m.
When the Federal Aviation Agency denied the request (ostensibly because the notice was too short, but maybe because April 27’s memory was too fresh), Notify NYC sent another message to keep subscribers in the loop.
The series of alerts highlighted the little-known Notify NYC pilot program. Launched in December 2007, the program uses email, text messages, and auto-dialing to send emergency warnings to the public. While it’s just available in the four communities of lower Manhattan, the northeast Bronx, the Rockaways, and southwest Staten Island, the city is gathering data from the project and will extend the service citywide this year, according to Mayor Bloomberg spokesperson Jason Post.
New Yorkers got their first taste of the warning system shortly after its inception, when a crane fell and crashed at 200 Murray Street, and were warned of traffic delays and emergency activity. Since then, there have been plenty of others, though the alerts are kept short and sweet, like, “Emergency personnel are responding to a manhole fire on Maiden Lane. The loud noises heard throughout the area were caused by electrical arcing in this manhole,” and ” Building under construction collapsed- Reade Street between Broadway and Church Street. Emergency personnel on-scene. Further info will be provided as it is available.”
Mr. Post says that last Thursday, for example, a movie shoot required a simulated evacuation from a building in lower Manhattan, so a warning message was sent out so subscribers wouldn’t think it was real. “That might not make the news,” he explains, “but it will trigger a Notify NYC message, and people appreciate that.”
The first message about Monday’s Hudson River flyover went out at 10:01 a.m., and then the cancellation message was sent at 10:29 a.m., “but we can send things out faster than that,” Mr. Post says. “This is a real life example of turning around a message from city government to people’s cell phones who have signed up for a service in 20 minutes.”