We expect some powerful rain today and a flash flood watch is in effect. We could see an inch of rain over the course of one hour. Take this weather seriously and exercise caution, especially on your commute or if you live in a basement apartment. Follow @NotifyNYC for more. pic.twitter.com/EqevmhN7WJ
Last night, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Public Safety Department (PSD) together with the NYC Emergency Management Department (NYCEM) and NYPD 114 precinct hosted an emergency preparedness workshop for Roosevelt Island residents.
Watch the workshop, it could help you, your family and neighbors in an emergency.
Part 1 - Intro by RIOC Public Safety Chief Kevin Brown
Part 2. Deputy Chief Anthony Amoroso.
Part 3 - NYCEM Senior Outreach Coordinator Ed Powell and NYPD's Jean Baptiste
Hurricane Harvey is raging in Texas. The news reports today from Houston are mind boggling. Tremendous suffering and amazing acts of bravery and kindness.
A reporter in Houston spotted a truck driver stuck in the flood. She was able to flag down police who saved his life live on TV. Holy crap. pic.twitter.com/v2nNjxJ12P
Thank you to all the first responders and people helping each other out. That's what we do as Americans. Here's one way you can help now. https://t.co/iGfE8rAoAu
Mid September is the the opening of the United Nations General Assembly Session and 2016 is no different than previous years in terms of its impact on Roosevelt Island residents. The opening of the UN General Assembly means the diversion of all East River boat traffic to the Roosevelt Island East Channel Queens side for security precautions due to our proximity to the United Nations resulting in the intermittent closings of the Roosevelt Island Bridge.
Roosevelt Island Bridge- Intermittent raising 9/13-9/26 for UN General Assembly.
The NYC Department of Transportation Division of Bridges will doing intermittent raising of the Roosevelt Island Bridge starting from 7:00 AM- 8:00 PM Tuesday, September 13, 2016 to Monday, September 26, 2016 due to the rerouting of boat traffic during the United Nations General Assembly. Each opening should take anywhere from 8-12 minutes to complete. Expect intermittent traffic disruptions and delays on Main Street and along the Roosevelt Island Bridge approach.
For more information, please contact the Division of Bridges/Community Affairs at (212) 839-3740.
Roosevelt Island resident Raye Schwartz objects to the annual intermittent closings of the Roosevelt Island Bridge during UN Week. Ms Schwartz writes:
Ever since I’ve lived here we’ve gotten some of these annual dumb-ass announcements related to the UN General Assembly meetings and nobody in RI management (RIOC, HUD, DHCR and all the other RI managers in the present and past) have ignored this because it is done by the US Coast Guard. Nobody wants to touch it. But here’s the issue:
1. While the bridge is open, neither fire trucks nor ambulances can get on or off the island. Sometimes they’ve even announced they’d have emergency personnel here, but they never do, and besides they’d never be able to get someone to a hospital, handle a major fire or even an attack by a disgruntled terrorist whose boat was rerouted and couldn’t aim at the UN.
2. Once I was coming home from shopping in Astoria and an ambulance was in front of me as we were turning onto the bridge. His siren was blaring as the bridge was just about to close, yet the bridge operator ignored the ambulance and continued to close. It was closed for 22 minutes.
3. The west channel is closed, but enables ships and pleasure boats to use the east channel, which has a power plant on its east shore that a terrorist could bomb.
4. The southernmost part of our island is directly opposite the UN complex, so a ship routed to the east channel could still aim a rocket at the UN.
5. Vehicle traffic on Vernon Boulevard is not rerouted and there are places where someone could also enable rocket missiles aimed at the UN complex.
Maybe I’ve read too many spy novels, but I’m sure I’m not the only one and if I have this kind of imagination…need I say more?
Meanwhile not only are 12,000+ workers and residents of this island inconvenienced but they are also endangered by this publicity show. This is something that should have been escalated to NY State and Federal officials, yet nobody wants to touch it.
By the way…it is not “Bridge Testing” as the RIOC advisory states in the header!
Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Acting President Susan Rosenthal reported yesterday to the June 23 RIOC Board of Directors meeting that after reaching out to the NYPD 911 Operations and Information Technology Departments, a technology software solution may have been found to fix the problem of NYC 911 emergency ambulance response time delays to Roosevelt Island.
As reported previously, NYC 911 Operators ask callers for Roosevelt Island cross streets before dispatching help to a Roosevelt Island resident, worker or visitor in need. The problem is that Roosevelt Island, unlike most of NYC, does not have cross streets, which causes confusion and delays in response time.
Ms Rosenthal said that as of yesterday, the technology solution proposed is to input:
... the 96 addresses on Roosevelt Island...
into the 911 system, so that:
... when one of those addresses come in, it will say Roosevelt Island...
and the 911 Operator will know where to dispatch the emergency vehicle.
Ms. Rosenthal added that we should know by next Tuesday, June 28, whether inputting the 96 Roosevelt Island addresses into the 911 system will solve this problem.
June 28 happens to be the date of a Roosevelt Island Town Hall meeting with NYC Council Member Ben Kallos, NY State Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright and NY State Senator Jose Serrano where the issue of 911 emergency response time delays will be raised by concerned residents.
Below is the video of Ms. Rosenthal's President's Report to the RIOC Board which includes the 911 Emergency response discussion as well as info on:
New Roosevelt Island Ferry Dock location (still to be determined),
Hazardous seawall railings repair,
Cultural center repair,
New RIOC web site and
July 4 Fireworks viewing registration.
Ms Rosenthal had previously sent this May 23,2016 letter about problems with Roosevelt Island 911 emergency response time to NYPD Chief of Community Affairs Joanne Jaffe:
Chief Jaffe,
As Acting President of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), I am writing to express my great concern regarding an incident that occurred on March 15, 2016, when a Roosevelt Island resident died of a heart attack while waiting for EMS to respond. When 911 was first contacted on that date, the operator insisted that the caller provide a cross-street, as the dispatch computer located Roosevelt Island in Queens County. The caller expressed that there was no cross street and that Roosevelt Island is located in Manhattan, but to no avail. Approximately fifteen minutes later, when EMS still had not arrived, 911 was contacted again, but by then, it was too late.
As you are aware, Roosevelt Island is situated in the East River of Manhattan, and though technically considered part of Manhattan, it is vehicle accessible by bridge from Long Island City. It also consists of a single roadway, known as Main Street and there are no cross streets on the Island.
The Chief of our Public Safety Department, John McManus, has been in contact with senior management at the Office of Emergency Management regarding this incident and he is coordinating a meeting with OEM, senior leadership of the New York City Police and Fire Departments, and the New York City Emergency Medical Service, to discuss this matter further and to prevent the event described above, from happening in the future.
I am looking forward to working with you and the other entities and am hopeful that our collaboration and continued discussions will resolve and correct any issues that caused this unfortunate incident on March 15, 2016.
All 911 calls are first answered by an NYPD Police Communications Technician (PCT). The PCT determines the nature of the emergency and routes it to the proper dispatcher (NYPD, FDNY or FDNY EMS) who determines the appropriate responders for the incident and dispatches them to the scene.
The reports on this page only cover calls that the City received through 911. Emergency incidents can come to first responder agencies from outside 911 including from fire alarm systems, street observations, and inter-agency requests for assistance (e.g. NYPD calls for an ambulance).
Due to the complex and varied nature of the calls to the City's 911 system, the process of responding to those emergencies involves seven different systems that work together to handle any type of incident that may occur. OCEC partnered with the Mayor's Office of Data Analytics to measure all the time segments involved in responding to an emergency to determine the average response time to all categories of call types. This information allows us to look at how much time each stage of the process takes and find ways the process can be improved to reduce overall response time and maintain a high level of performance during disasters.
Figure 1 is a high level schematic of the call taking and dispatching process.
Figure 2 is a detailed schematic of the call taking and dispatch segments and the agency responsible.
Hopefully, inputting the 96 Roosevelt Island addresses into the 911 system will solve this problem.
Roosevelt Island's elected officials are hosting a Roosevelt Island Town Hall Meeting 6:30 PM, June 28 at the Good Shepherd Community Center (543 Main Street)
One issue of concern that should be discussed is the 911 emergency response time delay to Roosevelt Island.
Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Acting President Susan Rosenthal sent this May 23,2016 letter about problems with Roosevelt Island 911 emergency response time to NYPD Chief of Community Affairs Joanne Jaffe:
Chief Jaffe,
As Acting President of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), I am writing to express my great concern regarding an incident that occurred on March 15, 2016, when a Roosevelt Island resident died of a heart attack while waiting for EMS to respond. When 911 was first contacted on that date, the operator insisted that the caller provide a cross-street, as the dispatch computer located Roosevelt Island in Queens County. The caller expressed that there was no cross street and that Roosevelt Island is located in Manhattan, but to no avail. Approximately fifteen minutes later, when EMS still had not arrived, 911 was contacted again, but by then, it was too late.
As you are aware, Roosevelt Island is situated in the East River of Manhattan, and though technically considered part of Manhattan, it is vehicle accessible by bridge from Long Island City. It also consists of a single roadway, known as Main Street and there are no cross streets on the Island.
The Chief of our Public Safety Department, John McManus, has been in contact with senior management at the Office of Emergency Management regarding this incident and he is coordinating a meeting with OEM, senior leadership of the New York City Police and Fire Departments, and the New York City Emergency Medical Service, to discuss this matter further and to prevent the event described above, from happening in the future.
I am looking forward to working with you and the other entities and am hopeful that our collaboration and continued discussions will resolve and correct any issues that caused this unfortunate incident on March 15, 2016.
Cornell Tech hosted a Roosevelt Island Community Update Town Hall Meeting last night at the Manhattan Park Theater Club.
Among the presentations included a review of the plan for the new campus and the construction progress to date by Cornell Tech Director Of Capital Planning Andrew Winters. Mr. Winters emphasized the intent of the campus design is to be open, attractive and accessible to the community. The campus will open in the summer of 2017.
Here's what Mr. Winters had to say.
Mr. Winters also answered questions from the residents attending on a wide range of topics including Sportspark (despite rumors to the contrary, Cornell Tech has no interest in taking over management operations of Sportspark)
and problems with the 911 emergency service to Roosevelt Island (Cornell Tech is happy to help on improving the 911 emergency response for Roosevelt Island).
Also, Cornell Tech Director of K-12 Education Diane Levitt described the past and future partnership with Roosevelt Island's PS/IS 217.
Will post the full video of Town Hall with additional presentations and more questions and answers as an update within the next couple of days, if not sooner.
Roosevelt Island is a mixed income, racially diverse waterfront community situated in the East River of New York City between Manhattan and Queens and is jurisdictionally part of Manhattan. The Roosevelt Island Tramway, which connects Roosevelt Island to the rest of Manhattan, has become the iconic symbol of Roosevelt Island to its residents.
The Purpose of this Blog is to provide accurate and timely information about Roosevelt Island as well as a forum for residents to express opinions and engage in a dialogue to improve our community.
