Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Holds Media Availability on Manhattan Blackout

July 14, 2019

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good afternoon, everybody. The incident last night, which had a very big impact on a part of Manhattan, went on for about five hours. You’re going to hear in the course of this press conference a lot of detail about what we do know, about what happened, and how it proceeded, how it was addressed. I want to say up front, you’re going to hear a lot specifically from Con Ed, and they will tell you everything that they can confirm at this point. There’s a lot more information to come because we need to go through a very exhaustive, careful investigation to understand exactly what happened. So, I want to level set from the beginning.  You’re going to get a lot of detail but there’s still a number of answers we’re going to need to make sure that something like this never happens again.

What we do know – and it’s not about the machinery – what we know, first of all, is the way that New Yorkers responded. New Yorkers are absolutely the strongest, the toughest, the most resilient of any people anywhere. And when adversity shows up, New Yorkers deal with it in an amazing way. So, as we saw – and we’ve seen it in other situations as well – people immediately looked out for each other, made sure that anyone who needed help was getting it. It was another moment to be proud of this city – the way people handled it. And thank God the incident last five hours only, but during those five hours New Yorkers distinguished themselves.

And also, crucial to say, and I’ll probably say it several times – our first responders did an absolutely exemplary job. Pressed into service in large numbers, very quickly, making sure that folks stuck in elevators were rescued, making sure that folks on those two subway trains were brought to safety, making sure that traffic was controlled. An amazing job by FDNY, NYPD, Emergency Management, DOT – so many agencies immediately deployed because they have been preparing for situations like this and they knew what to do and they brought a huge amount of personnel in to do it. But I want to thank all of our first responders. There’s a lot of people in this city very, very grateful to them right now for the exemplary effort yesterday.

Now, at this point, there’s something that’s important to say and it’s a very good thing. No injuries. No hospitalizations reported to this hour. We hope and pray it stays that way. Again, the exact duration, almost to the minute – five hours from the first incident becoming clear that it was something substantial until when all power was restored. There are no remaining disruptions to traffic or transit. Things are back to normal with both traffic and transit.

Very quickly, OEM, under its new leader who I’ll introduce in a moment stood up the command center. Key city officials, leaders of the first responder agencies gathered. The Elevator Task Force was activated. That is a pre-planned initiative to get people out of elevators. FDNY did that superbly with a large number of situations. The protocol to check on vulnerable people was activated. Because of the relatively short duration it wasn’t needed in any way in its fullest. But what we do now – and we learned this lesson during Sandy, during Hurricane Sandy – is we have lists of buildings where there’s people who need special help. That protocol was activated. Some people were reached and then the incident was over. 

So, we, as in every situation, are going to fully analyze every detail, working with Con Edison. All pertinent City agencies are going to work closely with Con Edison to figure out exactly what happened, exactly how we can make sure it does not happen again. We’re also going to review all of the response to look for any lessons we can learn about how we can do that even better in the future.

I want to thank some of the officials who are here today who played a very important role yesterday. First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, Deputy Mayor for Operations Laura Anglin. I want to thank – you’re going to hear from the president of Con Ed – but I also want to thank the Senior Vice President for Central Operations Milo Blair. I want to thank the elected officials who were there working to help their communities and – both as Speaker of the City Council and as the Council Member representing the affected area, Speaker Corey Johnson, and, of course, State Senator Rob Jackson. All of them were tremendously helpful in this effort. 

Now, the investigation is going to look at the root cause but I want to say upfront the one thing that we are as certain as we can be at this moment about is this was not a cyber-attack and this was not act of physical terrorism. When I got the news, the first calls I placed were to Commissioner O’Neill and to Commissioner Criswell, and they quickly confirmed not just on behalf of the NYPD but on behalf of our federal security partners that there was no evidence whatsoever of any nefarious activity in this situation. 

You’re going to hear from President Cawley in a moment about some other things that Con Ed might be able to say are very unlikely causes. But again, to get to the definite causes, it’s going to take a lot more work. When that analysis is complete, and we’ll do it in stages, any changes that are needed in terms of changing the physical approach, new regulations, whatever it may be we’re going to get to work on immediately but it will take some time to make sure we get exactly right what happened here. 

Now, I was just at the Con Ed Diagnostic and Restoration Center. They have done a very good job moving quickly to secure the situation. I want to thank everyone at Con Ed for their quick efforts here. They are going to be part of systematically trying to understand exactly what happened so, again, we can avoid it in the future and we will assist in every way. 

I am mindful that this happened at a point where there was relatively low energy usage in the city. And that’s one of the other things you’ll hear from President Cawley but that’s one of the things that does not look like the cause. It was not a massive energy need, electricity need driving this. It was actually a pretty low level amount of energy being used yesterday compared to some other times. We’re very mindful that later this coming week it’s going to get up into the 90s. We’re going to work closely with Con Ed to make sure all the redundancy is in place to ensure that as it gets hotter Con Ed’s going to be able to handle that. 

Let me just say a few words in Spanish and then bring up some of my colleagues –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish] 

With that, I’m going to bring up three of my colleagues from government and then President Cawley from Con Ed. First, it’s only her second week on the job but she’s very, very experienced dealing with crisis and disasters all over the United States of America. So, she was, as we imagine, very cool under fire helping to lead the response. Our new Commissioner for Emergency Management, Deanne Criswell. 

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Emergency Management: Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, everybody. Again, my name is Deanne Criswell, and just a little bit of an update of the things that we did yesterday. So, as you heard it started at 6:47 pm and by just before midnight we did have all power restored. We did show that there was at a peak just close to 73,000 customers that were without power within six networks. And MTA subway lines did face multiple service disruptions but they all have been restored. All of the traffic signals have been restored and one hospital, Mount Sinai West, was also in the area that was impacted but they did quickly switch to generator power and they are now back on grid power.

What we did was we activated our Emergency Operations Center and we brought in 20 representatives from City agencies to work in the Emergency Operations Center through the night and into the morning until we had confirmation from Con Ed that the system had been stable. We also brought out our Incident Command Center where we were able to coordinate here on scene to make sure we were sharing information in a timely manner. 

As it is right now, all systems have been restored. We have gone back to normal operations. All of our personnel are still monitoring and we’re working closely with Con Ed as they continue to look into the cause of this and making sure that if anything does happen through the next week that we are prepared to respond as well. 

Right now, I’d like to introduce Commissioner O’Neill for his remarks.

Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill: Good afternoon, everybody. So, at 18:47, that’s when we were first notified. We did a mobilization so we brought additional police officers into the affected areas. Initially it was the 2-0 and parts of Midtown South. That composed – in the end, ended up deploying over 400 police officers, 16 of them being from our Emergency Services Unit. They were part of the Elevator Task Force. We brought in, also, an additional 100 traffic agents. 9-11 initially, there was a little bit of a problem, there was a little bit of a backup, a more than 30 second delay, but that was cleared up by 2000 hours. As the Mayor spoke about, there were two trains that needed assistance getting into the stations. One being 8-6 and Broadway, and one being 5-9 and Columbus – and that was affected about 2,800 passengers. 

We had a major event obviously in Madison Square Garden, and working with Madison Square Garden personnel we were able to safely evacuate everybody else from that event. The only issue is that we did have to pull resources from around the city. We did bring in Strategic Response Group, Critical Response Command, but we also brought in a car from each precinct from around the city. So that’s a little bit of an issue on a busy Saturday night for us but power was restored and everybody was sent back to their commands after midnight. Thank you very much.

Mayor: Now, we’re going to have Commissioner Dan Nigro, and again tremendous thanks to the NYPD for their efforts. Extraordinary efforts by the Fire Department particularly getting all those folks out of the elevators. Commissioner Nigro – 

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro: Thank you. As you can see around us, we live in a vertical city and especially where this was affected most is a particularly vertical part of the city. So we had more than 400 stuck elevators when this occurred and our – the efforts of the Fire Department members, NYPD, ESU, we were able to get people out of each and every one of those elevators and some of them were quite difficult involving breaching and blind shafts. But everyone was removed safely. Calls spiked, as Commissioner O’Neill said, as soon as this happened. We noticed that call spike. We brought in fire apparatus, EMS units from our other boroughs. We held EMS units over that were going off tours and at the height of this we had 93 additional ambulances here in Manhattan to handle the call volume so that by the time this event ended, there was only one call in the city holding which is less than on a typical Saturday night. So, I think our members reacted quite quickly, they reacted quite well, and they took care of the people in this area of the city and thankfully it was all over by midnight.

Mayor: Thank you. Now, Con Edison President Tim Cawley.

President Tim Cawley, Con Edison: Good afternoon, all. So, I’ll start off by saying we sincerely regret the power disruption and the impact it had on the lives and businesses of the people of this great city. I’ll talk a little bit about the event, how the restoration went, and then importantly, the actions we’ll take to understand why it happened really in effort to reduce the likelihood moving forward. 

So, as was mentioned – 6:47 pm last night our operators, the system saw at our West Side Transmission Station a number of breakers open up effectively de-energizing the neighborhoods surrounding that West Side station. And in reaction to that, we go about first understanding what the status of the condition is and then developing a restoration path to get the customers back in lights. So, that involves both inspections of substations and other equipment, a quick visual inspection to what the nature of the equipment is, and more importantly we do a lot of data analysis. There’s relays and voltage and current readings and we put that together, we can understand what equipment is healthy and is ready to go back and what equipment is more questionable to go back.

And the robustness of the system particularly at this time of year in the weekend in Manhattan is that we don’t need to restore all of the equipment to restore all of the customers. So, we – after going through that analysis, we established a path back and by a little after 11:30 pm last night we were able to restore all six of those networks and 72,000 customers. 

We left off some equipment that requires additional testing before we see its fit for service and fit for duty and some of that equipment may need repairs. Notwithstanding the fact that some of that equipment in a few cases might need repair, the cascading or sort of the widespread nature of the failure is really what we’re going to dig into on the root cause analysis. So, we’ll understand how individual equipment components operated but more importantly we’ll understand the dynamic of the grid and why a failure – if it turns out to be – on one component led to a much wider impact on the system 

So last night the focus until just before midnight was assess the damage, determine a restoration path back, and execute on that path. And like I said in a little less than five hours we accomplished that. We immediately turned to lessons learned analysis, understanding with reams of data what the system configuration was at the time of the incident and sort of back casting and learning what was the key driver and how could we prevent it moving forward. 

That will take some time to do. I can tell you we know some things, as was mentioned. We have no indication at all that this was involved in cyber in any way or a physical attack. In terms of loading or demand on the system, it was a warm evening last night but in terms of the peak demands that Manhattan exhibits on those hottest weekdays, the demand was very low. So, loading of equipment was not an issue at all. In fact, as I said we were able to restore all the customers while leaving some equipment out of service. So, we’ll really focus on that lesson learned analysis. 

I want to especially thank the emergency responders, many of whom are represented here and our employees who worked diligently to restore the power. And equally, I’d like to thank New Yorkers – calm, poised, through a very difficult situation. We understand what that is and really appreciate the maturity with which New York approached it with calm and poise. The collaborative effort with the State and the City was really what it should be and allowed us to provide the restoration that we did. Thank you. 

Mayor: Thank you very much, Tim. All right, let's take questions. Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, when I heard about the incident, I was waiting to understand exactly what was going on so we could make that decision. Also, it’s, unfortunately, on a Saturday evening. It's a very long trip back, so I wasn't going to be able to be here immediately under any circumstance. The most important thing was to get a clear picture – what was going on, was it going to be immediately resolved or not. Once it was clear it was not going to be immediately resolved, I started back immediately. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No, it's a combination of things. First, again, understanding is this something that's going to be resolved immediately or not. It was knowing that it was going to take quite a while to get back, so I was going to have to provide guidance wherever I was, which is what any leader has to do, and I was doing that with conversations directly with the Police Commissioner, with my Chief of Staff, with Commissioner Criswell. I want people understand that this job, and any public CEO today, you have to take charge wherever you are, and I did that. But in terms of the decision, as soon as it became clear we did not have an immediately resolvable crisis, I started moving. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, look at this response. Let’s make it real simple – first responders did an amazing job, the leaders here did an amazing job. They all got on-site quickly. I was in constant touch with them. This was handled within five hours. That's what I have to say. 

Go ahead – 

Question: [Inaudible] 

Mayor: Correct, which was a four – so, the four-hour drive and then we had to wait for a flight. So, obviously, it's a period of time. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Yeah, and this was one of the – this was one of those situations where the timing was particularly problematic – Saturday evening, so there's fewer flights by the time we could get there and we were in a place that was just harder to get to a major airport from. But again, with modern communications, the minute it was clear we had a serious situation, I was on the phone with all of these folks. We were talking constantly. We were making decisions about what had to be handled.

Yeah?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, guys – so, you're asking the same question in different ways. So, I'll just answer – I’m really happy – I’ve worked very closely with Speaker Johnson. I think he did a great job yesterday. Every one of us is going to do what we can do. As someone who travels – and I traveled before this campaign – you have to be in charge wherever you are, it’s as simple as that. And, again, with email, with cell phones, I’m in regular touch with my folks, confirming the situation is being handled properly. I think all of these folks did a great job.

Please?

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: Yeah, and we’re anxious to know as well. So, this location – no particular point – this is within the area that was impacted, certainly – we had a distribution feeder nearby that failed. That's a lower voltage 13 KV feeder really not related. We're going to look at everything, but this is really where folks mobilized the evening as things unfolded without a better place to mobilize – it was in the grid. So that's really why we're here. In terms of the root cause, we have a team full-time on it working now. It takes time. So, like I said, certain things we know – the equipment that was restored that is providing the power today, we know that equipment is sound, and that's the vast majority of the equipment. Certain equipment that is – that requires testing to confirm its health, we’re going to have to work through that physical testing. In addition to that, we had to put together a very detailed timeline or chronology of what was happening on the system where and when. And to give you a picture of this – the chronology – the electric system works in cycles-per-second. So, an AC wave is 60 cycles per second. Our technicians will really be measuring the activity across this grid in cycles per second. So, it's painstaking. We have to pull a lot of data, we have to collate it and then sort of come up with reasons as to why events on the system resulted in this broader [inaudible] –

Mayor: [Inaudible] helpful to add – you mentioned it earlier. Sort of, help people understand how built-in redundancy you have in general. 

Cawley: So, in Manhattan, on the hottest day of the year – and at the end of this week, it’s going to be very hot – we designed the system such that for loss of any two major components serving an area, we could still serve the system on the hottest day of the year. So, if we had five transformers feeding one of the neighborhoods or networks, on the hottest day, if we had three in service, we can meet that demand. So, there's incredible redundancy in terms of our capacity and there's also incredible redundancy and differentiation with regard to relaying and communication circuits, differentiation of routing – we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket – different technologies are used, fiber and copper, or other to sort of transmit this data that helps keep the grip operating smoothly. So, we’ve built-in a lot of capacity redundancy and design resilience. And so that's why we're going to have to dig deep to understand not withstanding all of those built-in backups this event sort of got past that and resulted in the large outage at the West Side station.

Question: [Inaudible] 

Mayor: Look, I think the more eyes on it the better. I don't know how much faith I have in this Department of Energy, honestly. I'm not trying to be political. I think we've seen a lot of incoherence. I think we're getting some very clear facts here. We're going to hold Con Ed’s feet to the fire. We're going to work very closely with them. But look, if the Department of Energy has something to offer, of course we want as many eyes on the situation as possible.

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: Yeah, so there would be theories. I can tell you that the failed circuit is a 13,000-volt feeder. They fail – we have a lot of them and they, they fail on occasion, and we have a lot of maintenance and replacement programs in place to mitigate that, to sort of identify where the most risky areas – the riskiest areas are. But really, to think a 13 KV feeder translate to the transmission system is sort of a nonstarter. Our team will look at everything, because it happened in and around the time. But it might – the reverse potentially could be true, but that being the cause of the backup to the transmission system is really a nonstarter. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: Yeah, and that's the distribution circuit failure that I talked about. So, when that fails, sometimes there's an arc and a flash. To have that cause the [inaudible] power system is really a nonstarter. It's possible that – possible, that the loss of the grid might've caused something to happen as that was happening, but it wouldn't back up that way. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Hold on everyone – everyone, hold on. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Let’s finish this and we'll come to ICE – the ICE situation. 

On this one – yeah?

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: Yeah, so I don't have the details on the impact, but the MTA system, like other systems, if they lose power and a part of their auxiliary systems rely on power, they're going to be impacted. And I think that's what happened. We've done some investment in the MTA and I think it's yielded good results. We've upgraded infrastructure, feeding those services. We've set up a location where we could quickly connect emergency generators in short order under a contingency. So, I don't have the details, but if you have a widespread power outage and systems rely on power, you're going to have impact. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Wait, wait – guys, guys, guys, guys – I’m going one side to another.

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: That’s part of what the team will look at. We're about 12 hours into this. So, it's part of what the team will look – we don't think that the age of the equipment was a driver in this. We have very robust investment programs where we target equipment that is more likely to fail and we replace it. We invest billions of dollars in the system and we have maintenance cycles that ensure it's operating well. So, we don't think the age contributed.

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: It depends on the equipment, a breaker, a feeder – so, various cycles, but robust for the industry. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: So, give the history of when the last [inaudible] – 

Cawley: So, in 2003, there was the big northeast blackout, and that started elsewhere and impacted us, not really our grid, and we had to restore there. The last event that was like this, I think was 2006 for less than two hours customers in – the event started in Queens, and it was basically a relaying operation where breakers opened too aggressively and isolated customers for about 90 minutes. So, from 2006 to today – you know, 13 years – we haven't had this happen. It's one of the things we try to design for both with capacity and resiliency in our designs. And so, we think the grid is sound. We are certainly going to learn everything we can about this event, and if there are lessons learned that we can apply moving forward, we will.

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: So, it ranges from transformers, to auxiliary equipment on transformers. And this is really – on the initial pass, in those first few hours, the operators and technicians are pulling in data and assessments from the field on the physical look of the equipment and saying this stuff is all good to go back based on the data and the visual. This may be good to go back, but we don't need it, so let's pursue this path. And, as a result, we got the lights back on by midnight. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: It is absolutely the redundancy. We knew we didn't need it all, so we kept it off. And now we'll do the diligent testing to ensure it's ready to the grid.

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: Yeah, and I would say, the voltage level of that feeder, 13,000 volts, versus what we experienced at 345,000 volts, it is incredibly unlikely that the low voltage feeder impacted the bulk power system. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: Right in this neighborhood –

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner O’Neill: Yeah. No, we deployed pretty quickly. Every borough, every precinct has a plan – a blackout plan. We have a number of different plans, and it's going to take a little bit of time, especially if we’re bringing people all over the City. So, I appreciate New York and I appreciate New Yorkers. And when it’s happened in past, people stepped up to the plate, helped to keep traffic moving. So, I just want to thank all New Yorkers for last night. We got through safely and I want to thank to men and women in the NYPD for doing another terrific job.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner O’Neill: I’m not going – it’s an emergency situation. Do I want civilians directing traffic? Probably not. But if that’s the way we can clear up traffic and until we get there, I appreciate it – just have to do it safely.

Mayor: We can appreciate their efforts tremendously, and stating the obvious – when NYPD arrives, pass the baton. 

Question: [Inaudible] 

Cawley: So, I would say that we are confident the event that occurred last night had nothing to do – was not correlated in any way to high demands. So, high demands bring their challenges, but last night had nothing to do with it. And over the last years, we’d invest in the system and prepared for those high demands. And we prepare – we’ll be prepared to the end of this week. 
Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: If we thought the demand last night was a contributor in any way to the outages, there would be reason. We do not – we know that the demand last night had nothing to do with these addicts. We know that.

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: So, to me, it doesn’t. It sort of – the root cause of last night's event had nothing to do with the demand. Demand is another issue, and it's something that we’re – we need to address and to build out and to make [inaudible] but we feel prepared for that at the end of this week. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: That’s fair. So, the redundancy does service well. The grid is very reliable on an overall basis. And that's why we really need to dig in and learn why the addition – the additional capacity that we built into the system to this great city and the resiliency we bring into our relays and communications got past last night's event and we had be [inaudible]. That's why we were so focused on learning from the event.

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: So, what we know now is that a large transmission substation, that is basically a ring bus – a ring that feeds out to these neighborhoods that were impacted – that transmission substation, large portions of it became de-energized. And when that substation became de-energized, it had no ability to serve those neighborhood networks. So we had to restore that ring at the major substation. What we are going to go after in our root-cause analysis is why did that ring bus, that major transmission distributor open up and fail last night at 8:37 – 6:37.

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: No, there was a fire on this distribution theater, completely unrelated – that would not cause this failed power system. The reverse may be true when we look at it, but that would not be the case. 

Mayor: Last call on last night’s event. Anyone who has not gotten a question on last night’s event? 

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Where’s the substation – on that question, where’s the substation?

Cawley: It’s in Midtown on the West Side. It's at 49th Street. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: So, those are metered customers, and that's really the way we report out, sort of, the number of meters. In some cases, every resident gets a meter, in some cases the buildings get a meter. I do not have an estimate, but it is certainly more than the 70,000 metered customers in the area.

Mayor: [Inaudible] so everyone can hear it – full geography at the highest moment of the problem – or anyone who can help.

Senior Vice President of Central Operations Milo Blair, Con Edison: So, I'm Milo Blair, I’m the Senior VP of Central Ops, responsible for electric transmission. It extended from 30th Street on the south to 72nd Street from Fifth Avenue – some parts of the Fifth Avenue and back to the [inaudible]. So, all the folks that the area was affected. But, as you said, it was 70,000-meter customers. So, anyone in that area at that particular time –

Mayor: 30th to 72nd, Fifth Avenue to the river –

Blair: That’s correct.

Mayor: Okay. Anybody else? Yes?

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: Yeah, so we're in discussions [inaudible] to get testimony, lots of intervening parties. We think investments we're asking to make are – on behalf of our customers – to maintain the reliability of the system and to maintain the system at the high levels. So, we’re proceeding with the right case and we'll see where it turns out. But the [inaudible] is really to ensure our customers get the service that we think they deserve. 

Mayor: Last call on the event last night – last call, and then we’re going to talk about ICE. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: It’s not clear. If we have an individual component that fails, the grid should isolate that troubled area and none of us would see that. It we'd be sort of non-visible to everyone. For some reason, if we had an event – we're still doing the diagnostic on what that event maybe would be – if it didn't get isolated locally. It's spread out and impacted that full bus. That's really what the root-cause analysis does. And we really need to build a very detailed chronology to understand what was happening when, to piece together what happened, to understand how we might prevent it, moving forward. 

Question: [Inaudible]

Cawley: Yeah, I think it's too early to say.

Mayor: Again, just to say two things here. Again, the one thing we're trying to offer you is what we know it isn't – not a cyber-attack, not a physical terror attack or any other kind of malfeasance, not a peak load problem. That's so far what we think we can rule out and there's more to find out. 

Go ahead –

Mayor: You’ve asked the same question I asked. Great minds think alike. Didn’t you play me once? Great minds, great minds. So, I do appreciate it, because I've been through these situations where does a very detailed diagnostic. But what I've said to Con Ed is, we want – whenever we get to any milestone, when we know anything that’d be helpful for the media and the public to know we're going to put it out. So, the full perfect report could take a number of weeks, but getting to something that at least rules out more options or tells us some of the steps we need to take to protect New Yorkers – as that becomes available, we’ll be putting that out. Certainly, weeks any way you slice it.  

Okay. Last call on the event last night, then we’re going to ICE. Okay – your question, go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Yeah, correct.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No, and I'll bring forward Bitta Mostofi, who is the Director of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, and has done an outstanding job with her and her team staying in close contact with faith leaders, community organizations, immigrant-focused organizations all over the city. There's a lot of information flowing back and forth and people need constant updates and reassurance. And Bitta and her team have been doing that very well. This is what we know at this hour.

Three situations yesterday that we have confirmed – and you indicated them – involved ICE agents. Duly confirmed by eyewitnesses. We’re convinced that’s what it was. In no case did the ICE agent find the individual they were looking for. And then at this hour today, Bitta just checked again – literally no activity yet today.

So, I want to remind people, one, remember a few weeks back the President of the United States said he was going to literally deport all undocumented people and it was going to be a massive raid starting right away and that didn’t happen. I don’t know what’s happening in other cities, I don’t know what you guys are hearing – I do know this is not about the security of the people of this country and it’s not about enforcing the law. This is a political act by this president. He has politicized a United States government agency to help him win re-election. That’s what’s happening now and he’s stoking fear and he’s trying to pit immigrant against citizen in a way that’s very, very cynical. 

But then when the moment of truth comes, suddenly it’s all fear no action. So, I hope there is no action because I think it’s a horrible, horrible effort but at this moment nothing. Anything else on ICE. Okay, anything else? Yes?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: It’s very clear, every hour of every day I’m staying in touch with my team, I’m making sure things are being handled. As each of those situations was happening yesterday, I was getting a report. But we also know the very fact that we’re seeing no activity today – it’s very hard to plan your life around Donald Trump’s pronouncements. Let’s be really clear about that. We had no clue whether anything was going to happen today but we had a very aggressive plan in place. All our agencies have been preparing all week. So, I was confident in the plan. As a leader, you have to be confident you have the right people, the right plans, they’re ready to go, they’re being implemented. I was confident we had that in this situation. But the bottom line is in any situation where I think I see something that needs to be addressed by me on the site, I’m going to come back.

Question: [Inaudible] paint us a picture of where were you –

Mayor: Yeah –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Very late. The information – once it was confirmed by folks here that there was a major situation because remember we get reports all the time and we have to, through our team, confirm exactly what’s happening. So, there was a period of time where we’re working with Emergency Management, NYPD, Fire Department – everyone here had to talk to confirm what they believe what was going on to give me the full picture. That would be true if I was at Gracie Mansion or if I was anywhere else. First the professionals have to decide what they are seeing to be able to report it to me accurately.

We do not want a situation – no leaders wants a situation where you’re given one report that then turns into something very different and very different. First the professionals have to get an assessment of what’s happening. Once that was completed, I was informed that we had a serious situation but the first reports indicated that it was not clear whether it could be resolved immediately. There was some thought that it might be something that could be resolved immediately. When it became clear it could not, that’s when I started moving. 

Got into Chicago sometime after 1:00 am and here I am. Yes?

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner O’Neill: So, what – the NYPD’s job is to keep people safe. If there’s a situation, and there hasn’t been one, our Operations Unit is tracking this carefully. There hasn’t been any situations where the NYPD has been called to the scene. If we’re called to the scene, we’re there to keep everybody safe.

Mayor: Okay, thanks everyone – please, Speaker Johnson.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson: I’m really proud that that’s the stance that we’ve taken. And I’m really proud of the Commissioner and Mayor that, that is what the instructions have been to law enforcement agencies. And I just want to say on the incident last night, I’m really proud of the first responders. The new commissioner called me immediately. I was on the phone with her. She was providing me with updates. I’m really proud of the response that the FDNY, NYPD, and EMS distributed last night. And I think it was – of course, we didn’t want this to happen and, of course, there is a human toll to businesses and the people but luckily there were no injuries and I think we had a really textbook response where things went well. Within five hours, everything was turned back on. People were taken out of elevators in a timely manner and I’m proud of how things went last night and – but we have to get to the root cause of what happened. 

Mayor: Amen. Thanks, everyone.