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"Support businesses and organizations that support Downtown Express" City about to begin emergency contact plan Downtown By Julie Shapiro The next time Lower Manhattan residents hear a siren and want to know what’s happening, they won’t have to look further than their cell phones. Nearly four months after the fatal fire at the Deutsche Bank building, the mayor’s office announced an emergency notification plan called Notify N.Y.C. In Lower Manhattan, one of four pilot regions, people who sign up will receive a text message and an e-mail in an emergency. “C.B. 1 has been pushing for some time for the city to adopt a community notification plan,” said Julie Menin, chairperson of Community Board 1. “I’m very pleased that the city listened to a lot of our concerns.” The system will send “alerts,” which recommend an action, and “notifications,” which are informational. Anyone can sign up at www.nyc.gov, and messages will begin going out Dec. 10. The trial program will last until next summer and cost the city $700,000. “It’s not just Lower Manhattan — this is a citywide issue,” Menin said. “It is imperative that the city as a whole has a real notification plan.” Asked what he thinks of the plan, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he wants to see it in operation before deciding. “But I think we’re on the right track,” he said. Silver’s office had already been collecting e-mail addresses in Lower Manhattan and he said he has received a good response. Silver will turn those addresses over to the city program. The notification plan will be especially important during the demolition of the former Deutsche building at 130 Liberty St. and Fiterman Hall, Silver said. “When we start destructing buildings again, we want Downtown notification to be in place,” he said. Demolition at 130 Liberty St. was supposed to restart last month and still has not begun. The L.M.D.C. this week refused to say when the work will begin, and Avi Schick, the corporation’s chairperson, did not explain the holdup in an interview with Crain’s. The emphasis on high-tech methods for emergency notification should not cancel out other ways of spreading the word, Silver said. “There have to be some door knockers,” especially for people who are not in the notification system. “That all has to be there in case the technology doesn’t work,” Silver said. The notification system would have come in handy during the flood at 90 West St. last week, Menin said. Tenants needed information about the evacuation, and neighbors wanted to know why so many fire trucks converged near 130 Liberty St. “That’s exactly the type of situation that the community notification system could address, to expeditiously disseminate information to the community, so they know what’s going on,” Menin said. Jane Emanuel, a 90 West St. tenant, is eager to sign up for notifications. “That’s a really good start,” Emanuel said. “It would give you a bit of a head’s up.” Residents of 90 West St., who were working during the day of the flood, had no idea what was going on until they got back from work, she said. “This is really a wonderful day, with the mayor’s office announcing this bold move,” Catherine McVay Hughes, chairperson of the C.B. 1 World Trade Center Committee, said in a telephone interview. “It’s important for people to sign up, so any kinks can get worked out.” Hughes plans to sign up both herself and her two children. Her 16-year-old son already has a cell phone, and the new notification plan means that she will be buying her 12-year-old son a cell phone, too. “It’s really important that they stay in touch,” Hughes said. Hughes is especially interested in reverse 911, a call sent out to all phones on a list, which will be tested in parts of the Bronx and Staten Island. “If the pilot for reverse 911 works for other areas, I hope it will implemented in Lower Manhattan as well,” Hughes said. The mayor’s office is also exploring cell broadcasting, which would send messages to cell phones based on their location and would not require people to sign up in advance, a representative said. For example, tourists visiting Lower Manhattan would receive a text message during an emergency, even if they’d never heard of the notification program. Cell broadcasting is not part of the trials. Menin has advocated a community notification plan for several years, but “The [Lower Manhattan Development Corp.] was not responsive,” she said. She suggested to the L.M.D.C. many of the measures the city is now implementing, and kicked efforts into even higher gear after the fire at 130 Liberty St. in August that killed two firefighters. The L.M.D.C. is backing the new plan, which fills a “crucial need,” a spokesperson said. The L.M.D.C. has an e-mail alert system and turned its listservs over to the city for the pilot program. Menin worked with Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler to get the notification program up and running. Skyler will attend the C.B. 1 World Trade Center Committee meeting on Mon., Dec. 10 to present the plan. Skyler has said in the past that there are limits to text messaging and reverse 911, which is why both programs will be pilots. Texts are sent as a low priority by cell phone carriers and could be delayed up to a day in an emergency, and the city phone capacity could not accommodate simultaneous calls to a large percentage of city residents, according to Skyler. Menin is awaiting results of the pilot program before advocating any changes. “We definitely want to make sure that if there are any glitches, they are worked out,” she said. “The worst thing would be for misinformation to go out.” Kathleen Moore, a resident of 125 Cedar St., across from the World Trade Center, looks forward to seeing whether the new system will work. “It’s been six years we’ve been asking for something,” she said. “I’m glad to see that finally something is being done.” Moore is concerned that the text messages and e-mails will not reach everyone, and repeated a suggestion that someone jokingly offered at a meeting: Send a Mister Softee truck up and down the streets, with emergency notifications broadcasting over the loudspeaker. “That’s the best idea anyone has come up with,” Moore said, adding that she was only partly joking. Andy Jurinko, another 125 Cedar St. resident, is skeptical about the notification system. “I think anything at this point is better than nothing,” Jurinko said. However, he doesn’t use e-mail or text messages, so the new system wouldn’t reach him — and even if it did, Jurinko is not sure how effective it could be. “Nothing ever works according to plan,” Jurinko said. His time in the military taught him that the more high-tech a plan is, the greater the chance that something will go wrong. “Not to be absurd, but the old town crier is at least direct,” Jurinko said. He was particularly disappointed with the city after the Deutsche Bank building fire, when residents of 125 Cedar St. were forced to wait outside for hours without explanation. “It was almost like the World Trade Center hadn’t happened,” Jurinko said. “No lessons had been learned from the previous disaster in terms of dealing with the residents who live here.”
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