This joint oversight hearing, convened by the Committees on Technology, Public Safety, Fire and Emergency Management, and Governmental Operations, examined the seven-hour 911 system outage on August 18, 2026. City officials from OTI, NYPD, and FDNY testified about the cause, response, and impact of the outage, which affected approximately 1,696 calls, including 742 911 calls. The hearing focused on delayed detection, failure to notify the public, vendor accountability, and systemic improvements.
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.