Janice R. Andrews
Recently, New York City installed a state-of-the-art drone warning system to notify citizens of potentially dangerous weather conditions. But a serious issue was discovered after the system’s first extensive test: the Spanish notifications were almost impossible to understand.
Drones were used to broadcast flood warnings in both Spanish and English on Wednesday as heavy rainfall threatened numerous areas in New York City. The Spanish notifications lacked a lot to be desired, but the English warnings were intelligible and clear. A worried local posted a video of the incident on X (formerly Twitter) and expressed her displeasure with the inadequate Spanish translation.
The tenant commented, “As a Spanish speaker, I can say with confidence that this is incomprehensible.” “The city couldn’t find a single person who spoke Spanish to deliver this alert?”
Online, the video instantly attracted notice and provoked a backlash. Many questioned why, in a city as varied as New York, where a sizable section of the populace speaks Spanish, such an important public safety message was not thoroughly evaluated.
The Commissioner of NYC’s Emergency Management Department, Zach Iscol, addressed the outcry right away. He said, “I’m very proud of the work our team has done preparing for this storm, but this shouldn’t have happened and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” in an X post acknowledging his error.
The city’s new emergency drone system was introduced to improve communication during extreme weather occurrences, as previously reported by The New York Times. Mayor Eric Adams came up with the concept, which tries to use technology to protect locals. This program comes after earlier tech-driven initiatives by Adams, such the contentious NYPD “Spot Robot” for dangerous situations and the placement of security robots in the Times Square metro station.
Despite the fact that this linguistic error clouded the drone system’s launch, local officials are striving to guarantee that upcoming notifications are correct and available to all citizens.
