Flyover 911 Calls Full Of Panic, 9/11 Fears

Let's take the Air Force One flyover incident into yet another day! Fox News wanted to calculate the cost beyond the $328,835 it cost to fly the Boeing 747 and fighter jets on Monday, so it asked Mayor Bloomberg's office "how much the city had to spend to deal with the panic."

Apparently NYC 911 got flyover-related 97 calls (about a 15% increase) in an hour while Jersey City said it received about 13 calls. A Jersey City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said cops were dispatched to Exchange Place, "(The police) had a loudspeaker, telling people it wasn't an attack. There were people falling down stairs, and there was a lot of confusion and chaos." And NYC mayoral press secretary Jason Post said, "We don't have any inventory nor will we be able to prepare one. We can't count the jet fuel like the Pentagon did. It was an unwelcome disruption, but we don't have a number to put on it." (An unwelcome disruption...like mysterious maple syrup smells?)

Here are a few of the 911 calls—one below and others after the jump:

Time found that the Air Force, Pentagon, and White House press offices kept trying to shift calls inquiring about the flyover to each other. And the Daily News is asking readers to Photoshop Air Force One into photographs—you can see the submissions here.

And here's a link to a caller from Staten Island.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on April 30, 2009 9:15 AM

Comments [rss]

Spirit of 76

You gotta love how Faux News just loves to exaggerate everything bad about this administration. 97 911 calls equals "inundated" in a city of more than 8 million?

felixthecat2

Bloomberg knew about it, they were notified but were directed to keep it secret. Bloomberg claims an aide neglected to tell him about it. bullshit

JacqueMehoff

don't know if that's true but reading a commenter on the NYT blog mentions how the buck never stops at his desk.

he's always putting blame on someone else or seeking to blame someone or something.

fear is a business now. mostly the media as it's always been.

felixthecat2

point taken but I still have doubt since Bloomberg didn't fired the aide, you would think if an aide forgot to inform the Mayor of such an important memo that he would be fired.

JacqueMehoff

true again, why didn't he reprimand the NYPD commissioner Kelly? he knew about it, obviously.

why blame this aide? he's just a despicable human being.

valeriob

this embedded boston.com thing is a nightmare. Jen make it go away!

Jen Chung

Done!

jibbly

Jen, did you cross your arms and bop your head a la I Dream of Jeanie or wiggle your nose like Samantha in Bewitched?

Snoopy

Is that Mike Sheehan's replacement? She's much prettier than Mike.

gtraindelay

Does anybody else think people are making way to big a deal about this?

starrygordon

Yes, definitely. I think people have fetishized fear and terror and it has become a sort of social project, even a competition -- look how afraid I am! The authorities and the media encourage this because it makes people more dependent on them. Back in the Dark Ages when I was a child people used to be proud of being courageous, not fearful.

That said, it was incredibly stupid to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly a big plane around New York City just to take pictures. A student intern could have Photoshopped a picture like that for them in a couple of minutes and we could have skipped the panic and the boring celebration of it. But then I wouldn't have gotten to crank about it all....

hotstepper

slow news day.

valeriob

I don't think people understand how serious this actually was.

I'm itching for statistics on # of 911 calls and how many workers left their buildings.

Outter Burrougher

part of this article discusses the number of 911 calls and the police response necessary in Jersey City

TimSPC

How serious was it? A couple of people made some stupid mistakes. No one was killed.

valeriob

No.

Dan

I do think people are making a big deal over this, but there should have been a notification about it. There are bigger things to worry about than this.

gtraindelay

That's pretty much where I stand on it. I also understand that it was frightening to some people (I DID live in the city on 9/11). I just don't seem to understand all of the outrage.

Outter Burrougher

i don't.

rationally speaking, i know we were never in danger from this, but you don't point a gun at someone who survived a massacre and expect everything to be okay.