Thousands of sidewalk FDNY & NYPD emergency call boxes were out of service in Manhattan yesterday, from the late afternoon until shortly after 10 p.m. Yep, those things still work, sometimes! In 2011, the Bloomberg administration tried to eliminate the boxes, which according to the FDNY account for just 2 percent of the city's total emergency calls—and 96% of those call box requests are false alarms. But a judge denied the motion, deciding that to shut down the street side alarm system would discriminate against the deaf.
An FDNY spokesman would not go into detail about the cause of yesterday's outage, but the FDNY says Verizon, which provides the infrastructure for the call box system, was responsible. During the outage, the Office of Emergency Management urged deaf people in need of assistance to use the "911 Tapping Protocol." This was news to us, and even if you're not deaf, this could come in handy in a home invasion situation when you can't let the intruder hear your panicked cries for help (though you'll need to call from a landline for this to work, so if you're reading this on your smartphone while cowering under the covers, it's not a foolproof plan. HOWEVER, emergency responders are sometimes able to pinpoint your approximate location by triangulating cell tower signals, so don't hang up!). Here's how it works:
To summon the Police using a public pay phone: Dial 911 (no coin required). After dialing, wait four seconds and then start tapping on the mouthpiece of the telephone. Continue tapping for at least 90 seconds, and preferably until the Police arrive. (In New York City, every telephone automatically transmits its location to 911 operators, and help will be sent to that location.) Remain at the location to direct the Police to the emergency.
To Summon Fire or Emergency Medical Services: Use a repeated two tap pattern (TAP - - TAP ... pause ... TAP TAP ... pause ... TAP - - TAP...pause, etc.) for at least 90 seconds, and preferably until the Fire Department arrives. Use the same two tap pattern to summon Fire/Medical services, regardless of whether you use an emergency call box or call 911 from a public telephone.
To summon Fire/Medical services using a public pay phone: Dial 911 (no coin required). After dialing, wait four seconds and then start tapping on the mouthpiece of the telephone, using the repeating two-tap patter described above for Fire/EMS services. Continue this two-tap pattern for at least 90 seconds, and preferably until the Fire Department arrives.
Here's a pdf with the full explanation of the tapping pattern.
