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E-mails, text messages will alert residents in emergencies
Notify NYC set to begin pilot program Monday in select areas
The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — Text messages, e-mails and automatic telephone calls will be tested in the city as ways to spread information during potentially chaotic disasters and emergencies such as fires, floods and blackouts.
    The pilot program, called Notify NYC, will begin sending alerts Monday to residents in four communities to test each method of information delivery, city officials said Tuesday. The technologies will then be evaluated to determine whether they could be deployed citywide.
    E-mail and text message blasts of emergency information are gaining in popularity nationwide and in New York. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the nation’s largest mass transit network, recently said it was looking into creating a system for train delays and emergencies, and in September, St. John’s University was praised for electronically alerting students and staff about an armed man on campus.
    During emergencies in recent years, including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a citywide blackout and the crash of a small plane into an apartment building, a flurry of cellphone activity jammed many lines and prevented calls from going through.
    Some of the methods being tested in the city program, such as text messages, still would not get around that problem.
    But Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a bit of a technophile, said in a statement that “the public deserves the swiftest access to information its government can accurately provide during emergencies.”
    Lower Manhattan, the Rockaways in Queens, southwest Staten Island and the northeast Bronx were selected for the program. Residents in those neighborhoods would have to sign up through the city’s Web site — at http://www.nyc.gov  — to be part of the pilot program.
    City officials said lower Manhattan was chosen because of ongoing concerns about health and safety associated with the aftermath of the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. The 16-acre site is undergoing major redevelopment construction, and buildings adjacent to the site that have been condemned since the terror attacks are being taken down.
    Downtown residents have been particularly concerned about one of those buildings, the former Deutsche Bank tower. The skyscraper, which is contaminated with asbestos and other toxins, caught fire this past summer.
    Some people who live nearby said during the initial emergency response to that fire, in which two fi refighters died, the information was confusing about what residents should do and how much of a health risk they faced.
    That kind of confusion could be eliminated or reduced with electronic updates from the city, officials said.