NYC's new 911 call center adopts Sept. 11 changes

New technology at the center will give more information to call takers

By Samantha Gross
Associated Press

NEW YORK — New York City's 911 emergency operators now are able to give callers details about emergency events, reversing what the Sept. 11 Commission determined were flaws in a system that a decade ago denied people inside the burning World Trade Center potentially lifesaving information.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials formally launched a new $680 million 911 call center Thursday.

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The new technology at the center will give more information to the call takers, allowing officials to feed them information about emergencies and automatically showing them a map of the location of each caller.

The federal commission in 2004 concluded that on Sept. 11, 2001, the phone system's operators were unaware that fire chiefs were evacuating the doomed twin towers because the city had no way of relaying that information.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press