Joint Oversight Hearing on NYC’s 911 Emergency System Outage - September 9, 2026
Joint Oversight Hearing on NYC’s 911 Emergency System Outage - September 9, 2026
On September 9, 2026, the New York City Council Committees on Technology, Fire and Emergency Management, Public Safety, and Governmental Operations, State & Federal Legislation held a joint oversight hearing to examine the 911 system outage that occurred on August 18, 2026. The outage, caused by a Motorola firmware update at the Bronx Public Safety Answering Center 2 (PSAC 2), lasted approximately seven hours (3:13 AM to 10:19 AM), affecting 1,696 calls, including 742 911 calls. Of those, 319 unique callers were impacted, with 206 eventually connected and 113 unserviced. The hearing focused on the timeline, lack of public notification, redundancy failures, vendor accountability, and steps to prevent recurrence.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Jordan Rosenthal (Director of Advocacy at Community Access) testified in support of making the city's 911 system independent of the NYPD, citing a University of Chicago Health Lab study and the example of Seattle’s independent crisis response system. He argued that independence would clarify accountability and improve responses to mental health calls.
- Michelle Amp Lomanville and Beverly Lonmanville testified about Havana syndrome victims and concerns regarding biometric technology abuse, requesting a meeting to discuss 911's role in potential surveillance.
Discussion Items
- Timeline and Detection: OTI Commissioner Lisa Golopter testified that Motorola performed a low-risk firmware upgrade at PSAC 2 on the night of August 17, completed at 4:13 AM. The first indication of trouble came at 6 AM when a call taker reported audio issues with alarm company calls, but the full impact on 911 was not realized until 9:30 AM. NYPD first notified OTI of alarm call problems at 6:40 AM. The outage was resolved by rerouting traffic to PSAC 1 by 10:19 AM.
- Public Notification: Multiple council members criticized the failure to promptly notify the public. Chair Felice and others argued that by 6:40 AM, the city knew of a partial outage and should have alerted New Yorkers via Notify NYC. The administration defended the delay, saying the focus was on restoring service and that 70% of calls were still being handled; they committed to revisiting notification protocols.
- Redundancy and Monitoring: OTI acknowledged that existing redundancy (PSAC 1 and PSAC 2) did not automatically reroute calls during the outage. Monitoring systems failed to detect the error, prompting interim manual monitoring of call recordings. Commissioner Golopter stated that a root cause analysis is ongoing and that a freeze on non-critical updates has been implemented.
- Vendor Responsibility: Motorola performed the firmware update that triggered the outage but was not aware of the problem. OTI stated it is premature to assign blame or discuss contractual penalties until the root cause analysis is complete. NYPD did not have advance notification of the upgrade beyond a standard change advisory board process.
- Staffing and Next-Gen 911: NYPD reported progress in hiring 911 operators (1,370 currently, up 10% from last year) and expects to reduce mandatory overtime within 3-6 months. Next-Gen 911, originally due in 2018, is now scheduled for Q3 2027, with OTI promising a disciplined review.
- Earlier Outages: The hearing also reviewed a May 2026 text-to-911 outage lasting 110 minutes (12 callers affected), a 2024 configuration error, and a 2022 accidental power shutoff. FDNY noted that separate dispatch systems have been stable since initial 2021 glitches.
Key Outcomes
- The committee will send a follow-up letter requesting additional information on the root cause analysis, contractual penalties for Motorola, and a timeline for notification protocols.
- OTI committed to completing a thorough root cause analysis (estimated months) and will reevaluate risk classification for software updates, vendor oversight, and public communication policies.
- No injury or death attributable to the outage has been identified to date; NYPD called back hundreds of affected callers, reaching 32 individuals who reported no remaining crisis.
- The hearing was adjourned with plans for continued oversight and legislative action if necessary.
Meeting Transcript
Good morning. Welcome to today's New York City Council hearing for the Committee on Technology. Join with the Committee on Fire Emergency Management, public safety, governmental operations, state and legislation. At this time, please sign all cell phone electronic devices. Moving forward, no one is to approach today's. If you wish to testify today, please fill out an appearance card with the sergeant at arms. Chairs, we are ready to begin. Good morning and welcome to our hearing. I am Councilmember Carmen Della Rosa, and I am the chair of the Committee on Technology. I'm happy to be joined by my colleagues, Chair Ariola, Chair Felice, and Chair Brewer in holding this joint hearing on the on examining New York City New York City's 911 emergency system outage. I want to begin with the words of FDNY EMS local 2507, delivered before this council at a similar hearing. Clinical death begins after four minutes. Biological death begins after six minutes. And as local 2507 reminds us, in this modern era, emergency systems are designed to work diligently in seconds, because when a life is on the line, there is no time to waste, and every minute counts. However, in the early mornings of August 18th, for approximately seven hours, a part of New York City's 911 system failed as calls takers at the Bronx Public Safety Answering Center 2 could not hear callers. According to the New York Times, approximately 1700 calls were affected, and as many as 400 callers have not had not been connected with a 911 at all. New Yorkers were neither informed about the outage nor instructed to text 911 or call back while it was happening. Mayor Mamdani has since stated that the cost was a software update by OTI's vendor Motorola Solutions. Ironically, Motorola tells its public safety customers on its website when someone calls 911, every second counts. And if something is broken, we need to fix it and not tomorrow. We need to fix it yesterday. On August 18, New Yorkers lost not seconds but hours. The system was fixed seven hours later. Sadly, this was not an isolated warning. That October, human error caused another major disruption to FDNY's emergency dispatch system. And more recently, in 2025, staffing shortages have caused some 911 callers to hear a recorded message telling them to hold because every operator is busy. No complex system will ever be perfect. Software can fail. But 911 is not an ordinary computer system. It is the number New Yorkers call on the worst day of their lives. And we need to treat it with all of that seriousness. Today we want to learn what happened, why the public was not immediately informed, what safeguards exists and fail, what redundancy, what and what redundancy testing, staffing, and accountability are necessary to make sure that the next technological failure does not become a tragedy. Now I'd like to thank the technology committee staff, legislative council, Irene Bohovsky, and policy analyst Eric Brown, my chief of staff, James Burke, my staff, Hebaimad, and Frei Familia for putting this hearing together. None have arrived yet. So I will pass it to our oh, sorry. How could I forget our former chair? I'm sorry. Uh Councilmember Gutierrez and our Council Girl Gutierrez with us today. Um I also want to recognize and pass uh pass on for opening statements to our co-chairs. We'll start with Chair Ariola. Thank you, Chair. Good morning. I am Councilmember Joanne Ariola, and I am the chair to the Committee on Fire and Emergency Management. I want to thank my fellow colleagues, Chairs Brewer, Felice, and Delarosa for co-chairing this hearing today on the city's 911 outage that occurred last month. I also want to thank representatives of the administration and the public for attending today's hearing, as well as my fellow colleagues who are here today. As New Yorkers, we know the operation of emergency response services within a densely populated urban area is extremely challenging, and that it is when all aspects of our 911 system are functional. As was stated earlier, the August outage of our city's 911 system is highly alarming. This disruption impacted the safety of New Yorkers, not only by limiting the ability to receive emergency calls, but also to respond to these calls. It is paramount that we, as a city, provide life-saving responses to fire and medical emergencies and ensure life-saving services are promptly delivered as needed. During today's hearing, we want to learn about how both FDNY and EMS dispatch systems were impacted during the outage.
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