NEW YORK, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- New York emergency dispatchers made notes on paper and dispatched ambulances by radio when the 911 computer system crashed for almost two hours.
Officials with the fire department said the system was down from 2:15 p.m. to 4:05 p.m. Monday, affecting ambulance calls from Staten Island to the Bronx. Jim Long, a department spokesman, said additional operators were put on during the outage.
"This outage had nothing to do with being able to receive 911 calls. We were in constant contact with the NYPD," Long said. "We had no problem getting in touch."
The crash did not affect the 911 call system for police and fire emergencies.
Without computer tracking, dispatchers had no way of knowing what ambulances were available. There were no immediate reports of serious problems, although the New York Daily News documented one case where an assault victim in Brooklyn was taken to a hospital in a police van when no ambulance arrived.
