philly

Solar 911 – what the fuck? Oh yes. I learned some interesting things on Thursday morning at the news conference announcing the publishing of The Next Great City project's report. I was lucky to be able attend representing my company, one of the 60+ endorsers of the report. For me, the most interesting thing was in regards to our city's emergency preparedness. We're not fucking prepared.

We live in the fifth largest city in the United States (and beating down Phoenix with a stick when they're not looking). Our 911 system sucks. I think that either Montgomery or Bucks County has the hardware installed to know where you're calling 911 from if you're on a GPS enabled cell phone. The City of Philadelphia – nope.

If I heard The entire city is wired into a single power grid. If one thing blows, the whole city blows and is out of power. No widespread backup for anything. So when all hell breaks loose and something is going wrong in your neck of the woods, you can't call 911 for help. But in Chicago, they've installed a solar powered backup system for 911. NYC has installed solar panels in their Central Park station to keep it going should anything knock out all other power generators. [source].

So, Solar 911. Think about it.

There are some incredibly good things in this report. They've outlined 10 Actions which are all doable and when/if we do get them done, Philly will be a redonkulous place to live.

The room in the Atwater Kent Museum was packed. Michael Nutter was seated right in front of me, we exchanged nods; PA Congressman James Roebuck (D-188) was present, but left before the presentation; candidate for City Council at-large seat Marc Stier was in the house for the duration and through the Q & A session; and US Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA-02) dropped by in the end and said his campaign would fully endorse the entire plan.

It's a really cool coalition of groups coming together and pooling resources to lobby for change for the good of the city. Take a look through their website, they have tons of really great information.

Come on out to the next Town Square event on Urban Sustainability where The Next Great City coalition will be asking the Mayoral candidates for their views on the 10 Actions – February 15th at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 @ 1:45 am. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or trackback from your own site. Your comments will be moderated [if you have never previously commented] but will appear as soon as humanly possible.