Ooh - NY1 got "exclusive" access to 311 telephone records and found that thousands of calls were made complaining about the Queens blackout. Which seems to fly in the face of City Hall's claim that they had no idea of the severity of the blackout. From NY1:
Beginning on Monday, July 17, 819 calls were placed, and calls spiked at 3,497 on Wednesday the 19th, with residents reporting power problems in Queens and other parts of the city.
The records do not break down calls by neighborhood, and don't indicate whether one person has made duplicate calls.
There was also an increase in the number of calls requesting Con Ed customer service, with more than 1,300 inquiries coming in on Wednesday.
Compare those numbers with the amount of calls 311 got the week before the blackout. The city says during the period of July 3-12, 311 received roughly 160 calls per day from residents reporting power outages or requesting Con Ed customer service.
Eek. So the question remains - "Does the city use 311 as a bellwether - or do they simply sit back rely on Con Ed's numbers, which were totally off?
