Computer glitch hits city’s EMS

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA, GRAHAM RAYMAN, THOMAS TRACY AND LARRY MCSHANE

A four-plus hour glitch in the FDNY Emergency Medical Services’ computerized dispatch system sent multiple ambulances to the same address while spawning delays of up to an hour in answering 911 calls, sources told the Daily News Wednesday.

The Computer-Aided Dispatch program failed around 10 a.m. Saturday, and was finally restored around 2:40 p.m. as 911 operators were forced to manually take down information and deliver handwritten notes to the appropriate dispatchers for relay to EMS crews in the field, the sources indicated.

“They were able to answer calls,” said one source. “They simply weren’t able to dispatch digitally. So what they had to do was do it the old-fashioned way, and write out job tickets in this digital world of ours.”

FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer said the outage lasted from 10 a.m. to 2:40 p.m, and was under investigation by the department’s IT department.

“Dispatchers continued to dispatch calls utilizing pen and paper, and dispatching by radio, which is the backup plan they they train on,” he said.

Oren Barzilay, president of Local 2057, the union representing EMTs and paramedics, estimated that “hundreds of calls” were kept waiting before the problem was eventually resolved.

“Our men and women worked tirelessly under circumstances beyond our control,” he said. “They were still able to process and dispatch our EMS crews without our computer-aided dispatch system.”

According to a second FDNY source, there were backups of up to an hour on some calls although no major issues or loss of life were tied to the communication breakdown.

The manual system at this point would typically only be used in something dire, like a blackout, the sources explained.

Another FDNY source explained how the system failure created havoc for dispatchers. For example, the CAD system would quickly identify whether multiple people called to report an single incident at the same address, insuring only one ambulance would respond.

With operators forced to do things by hand, the source said, multiple ambulances were sent to the same job.