What is Notify NYC?

Notify NYC is the City of New York's official source for information about emergency events and important City services.

Registration

You can register for Notify NYC here or by calling 311 (TTY: 212-504-4115).

  • To Register online click the “Enroll” tab on the top of this page. You will be asked for basic contact and location information, so messages can be tailored to your area of interest and delivered by the methods you select, such as email, phone, or SMS/text. You must then check your email inbox for a confirmation email from Notify NYC and follow the instructions to finalize your enrollment.
  • To register by phone if you do not have an email address, call 311 (TTY: 212-504-4115) and ask to register for Notify NYC. You will then be connected to an automated registration system that will guide you through the registration.
  • Download the mobile app from Google Play Store for Android devices and from the Apple Store for Apple devices.
  • Follow us on Twitter by visiting our Twitter handle @NotifyNYC , and selecting “Follow” on the top right-hand side of the screen. Every Notify NYC message is available on our Twitter page. To ensure you are receiving our most critical Tweets, select “Be Prepared” and activate Twitter alerts.

If you do not have a NYC ID account, you must first create one here . After you create your account you must check you inbox for a confirmation email and follow the instructions to confirm your NYC ID account. You can then use this newly created account to register for Notify NYC.

To receive school notifications you’ll need to add the address of the school(s) or the cross street you want to receive notifications about. If you do not know your school’s address, you can go to https://schools.nyc.gov , and use their “Find a School” tool. Select “School Notifications” in the message types section, and enter the school’s address when prompted.

You may receive voice messages if your phone number was previously enrolled with Notify NYC and never deactivated. To remove your phone number from Notify NYC, call 311 (TTY: 212-504-4115) and report to them that you want your phone number removed. You may also click here, Contact Notify NYC, and report that you would like your phone number removed.

After an account is created, you must confirm the account before you receive messages. If you registered online, you should have received an email asking you to confirm your account. If you no longer have your confirmation email, go to www.nyc.gov/notifynyc, select “My Account,” and enter your username and your password.The system will acknowledge that your account is not yet confirmed and will automatically send you a new confirmation email.If you are attempting this procedure and have not confirmed your email, you cannot use the “Forgot Password” link.If you forget your password and have not yet confirmed your account, you must contact Notify NYC at notifynyc@oem.nyc.gov.

Registrants may find their confirmation codes in their spam or junk mail folders. Make sure you add Notify NYC ( notifynyc@oem.nyc.gov) to your approved sender list.

If you no longer have your confirmation email, go to www1.nyc.gov/notifynyc, select “My Account,” and enter your username and password. The system will acknowledge that your account is not yet confirmed and will automatically send you a new confirmation email.If you are attempting this procedure and have not confirmed your email, you cannot use the “Forgot Password” link. If you forget your password and have not yet confirmed your account you must contact Notify NYC notifynyc@oem.nyc.gov.

All you need are valid cross streets or a valid street address within the City of New York that you wish to receive notifications about.

Notify NYC messages are available by RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed. Every Notify NYC message will be posted to the Notify NYC website and available for delivery to your computer or RSS reader.

An RSS reader will be necessary to view this feed. Most commonly used web browsers or major websites such as Yahoo, feedly, and MSN have RSS readers. Once you have identified your RSS reader, follow the hyperlink: RSS Link

Every Notify NYC message is available via Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/notifynyc or by following @NotifyNYC.

  • Set up your mobile phone to send a text message to 40404
  • Enter message: “Unfollow @NotifyNYC” (without the quotation marks)
  • Wait for text message from Twitter confirming that you are no longer following us

From time to time an “Application Error” message may be received. Please log out of the Notify NYC, close your browser, and then return to the website. Please note – Internet Explorer is not currently supported by NYC ID. If you are using Internet Explorer, please try again using a supported browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari.

If this does not resolve the issue, please “Report a Problem” by following this hyperlink: Contact Notify NYC.

Please include your username, the browser you are using (i.e.Safari, Mozilla Firefox, etc.), and the time that you experienced the application error.We will work to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Messages

New York City Emergency Management operates a Watch Command team that monitors emergency activity throughout the city 24 hours a day, seven days a week.Watch Command monitors radio, computer, and 911 dispatches from the NYPD and FDNY. Additionally, Watch Command monitors information feeds from regional emergency operations centers, the Federal Aviation Agency, MTA, Port Authority, and many other federal, state, and local agencies for incidents that affect the city.When an emergency has the potential to affect a significant number of New Yorkers, the on-duty Public Warning Specialist working in Watch Command uses Notify NYC to inform the public.

Messages are sent as soon as possible after the confirmation of an unplanned emergency or significant event, which may occur at any time of day or night. When possible, prescheduled messages for planned events are sent during daytime hours.

You will receive messages about emergencies and important events in the areas you indicated were important to you. Determination of incident severity is at the discretion of the Public Warning Specialist and is based upon the projected impacts of an incident due to location, size, time of day, and number of people affected.

 Subscribers can sign up for the following messages:

  • Emergency Alerts (Required):Notify NYC subscribers are automatically registered for Emergency Alerts. All other message types are optional. Issued only for critical incidents involving likely or actual threats to the safety of you or others in your area, and often contain instructions on how to reduce the likelihood and/or severity of danger. Examples include shelter-in-place orders, mandatory evacuation instructions (as during Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy), and severe weather warnings (tornado, flash flood, etc.) which may be accompanied by a wireless emergency alert (WEA) issued by the National Weather Service.

    Notify NYC is mandated by law to issue the following types of missing person alerts to all subscribers and therefore these messages cannot be made optional to the subscriber: 

    • AMBER Alert: issued by the National Center for Missing and Exploited children only for the confirmed abduction of a child who may be in danger and either lives in or is expected to travel to the NYC area.
    • Silver Alert: issued by the NYPD for the disappearance of an at-risk senior who may suffer from a cognitive disability or might be in need of medical attention and is missing from the NYC area.
    • Missing Child Alert: issued by the New York State Police for a missing child (under 21 years of age) that is deemed to be endangered and is missing from or believed to be traveling to the NYC area, but the case does not meet AMBER Alert activation criteria. A missing child can be at serious risk of bodily harm or death without an abduction occurring. For example, children with Down syndrome, Autism, or other medical conditions can be at an extreme safety risk if they go missing.
    • Missing College Student Alert: issued by the New York State Police for the disappearance of a college student who may be in danger and either lives in or is expected to travel to the NYC area.
    • Missing Senior Notification: issued by the NYPD for the disappearance of an at-risk senior from or believed to be traveling to the NYC area.
    • Missing Vulnerable Adult Alert: issued by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services for the disappearance of an at-risk adult of any age who is missing from or believed to be traveling to the NYC area.
  • Notify NYC tries in all cases to include a photo, physical descriptions, and any other descriptive info available. Notify NYC subscribers can have a direct impact on the outcome of these cases simply by reviewing message contents, and calling 911 if you believe you’ve seen a missing person.

  • Basement Alerts: Notifications specifically designed to alert those living in basement apartment about life-threatening weather conditions. DISCLAIMER: During weather emergencies, subscribers may receive phone calls any time of day, including during overnight hours.
  • Significant Events: Issued for emergency events that impact your area but do not reach Emergency Alert severity. Examples include localized power outages, three alarm fires, police activity, and more.
  • Planned Events: Issued in advance of preplanned activity that will likely cause local disruptions and or alarm to the public. This includes drills and exercises by emergency personnel, filming of TV/movies, fireworks, ceremonial gunfire, scheduled demolitions, and planned flyovers. Whenever possible, these messages will be issued 24 hours prior to the actual event.
  • Police Advisories: Law enforcement announcements for your neighborhood from your local police precincts.
  • Local Mass Transit Disruptions: Planned or unplanned disruptions to mass transit systems within the five boroughs of NYC. This includes the MTA subway and bus service.
  • Regional Mass Transit Disruptions: Planned or unplanned disruptions to regional mass transit systems that affect NYC. This includes NJ Transit, Long Island Rail Road, Metro North, Amtrak, regional airports, etc.
  • Ferry Disruptions: Planned or unplanned disruptions or cancellations to ferry service lines within the five boroughs of NYC.
  • Major Traffic Disruptions: Planned or unplanned closures of, or significant traffic delays, on major roadways, bridges, and/or tunnels in one or several boroughs of NYC.
  • Public Health: Messages specifically regarding events with the potential to impact public health. Examples include Air Quality Health Advisories (issued by the State Department of Environmental Conservation) and mosquito spraying by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
  • School Notification: Issued when a NYC public school is impacted by an incident causing changes to normal school dismissal times or locations. This includes public schools being closed, and/or after-school activities being canceled due to inclement weather, and instances when a building condition causes students to be relocated from one public school to another. These messages provide the names and addresses of all impacted facilities, dismissal times and locations, and any other relevant information. Note: When signing up to receive school notifications, be sure to enter the address or intersection associated with that school.
  • Emergency Parking Suspension: Alternate side regulations may be changed because of inclement weather or emergencies. The NYC Department of Transportation and Department of Sanitation carefully consult weather reports before and during snowfalls in order to determine whether suspension is necessary. As weather patterns can change quickly, this decision must sometimes be made late in the day. After a snowfall, alternate side parking regulations will be restored so that plows can begin removing snow and ice from curbside lanes.
  • Weather Notifications: Information about severe weather events impacting your area, including products issued by the National Weather Service such as severe weather advisories, watches, or warnings.
  • Waterbody Advisories: Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) happen when a wastewater treatment plant or parts of the sewer overflow. This usually occurs when there’s a big rain event or snowstorm. When this occurs, wastewater is sent into our waterways without being treated. When signing up for a particular waterbody, Notify NYC subscribers will be notified when a CSO event has occurred in that area during the last 24 hours.
  • Beach Notifications: Issued when the NYC Department of Health or the NYC Parks issue an advisory or close a beach due to safety and/or health concerns. The NYC Department of Health is responsible for monitoring beach conditions which includes monitoring water quality to ensure it meets safety standards and inspecting beach facilities to ensure they meet NYC and NY State health codes. An advisory means that swimming or wading is not recommended at the affected beach. A closure means that swimming or wading is not permitted at the affected beach. For more information about beach status updates, please visit:
    • NYC Department of Health by texting BEACH to 877-877, call 311(TTY: 212-504-4115), or visit [DOH Beach Website].
    • NYC Parks by calling 3-1-1 or by visiting NYC Parks Department.
    • Notify NYC subscribers can select specific beaches within NYC that they would like to receive status updates about in settings.

  • Pool Notifications: Issued when NYC Parks closes a public pool due to water quality issues, lifeguard shortages, or mechanical issues creating a safety and/or health concern. NYC Parks is responsible for monitoring pool conditions which includes monitoring water quality to ensure it meets safety standards and inspecting pool facilities to ensure they meet New York City and State health codes.

The Notify NYC program is currently unable to accept requests for the issuance of AMBER, Missing Child/College Students, Missing Senior or Silver Alerts directly from the public. If you believe that someone you know is in danger or missing, please call 911 immediately.

Notify NYC is unable to accept requests for the issuance of AMBER, Missing Child/College Students, Missing Senior or Silver Alerts directly from the public. If you believe that someone you know is in danger or missing, please call 911.

Notify NYC is the official source for messages about emergency information and City services. When a website or blog takes a Notify NYC message and reposts it, they are making the message available to a broader audience; however, this is not the official source of information. There have been cases of Notify NYC messages being incorrectly re-tweeted or posted.

For this reason, please ensure you are registered with Notify NYC to receive official messages.

Each mode of communication has different character limitations. Messages received by phone and email can be longer than text and Twitter messages. If a long message is sent by text, the message gets broken down into separate messages that are not guaranteed by carriers to be received in the correct order.

While every effort has been made to ensure reliability of the systems the City uses, delivery of Notify NYC services is heavily dependent on external networks and providers outside the City’s control. The City is actively performing outreach with service providers to make sure accurate messages get to you. However, below are some examples of service limitations.

  • Email: While email is often the fastest way to deliver information, your ability to receive emails may be disrupted if the networks are damaged or are operating at maximum capacity.
  • Text Messages: Wireless data networks can also be compromised by outages and high traffic volumes. Additionally, most wireless carriers do not guarantee the timely delivery of text messages, nor do they guarantee text messages will be received at all. Contact your wireless service provider or review your contract to see how these policies might affect your ability to receive text messages from Notify NYC.
  • Telephone: This method sends pre-recorded messages to your phone, but it may be disrupted if your wired or wireless carrier is experiencing network congestion, outages, or you have poor reception.
  • Website: The City’s website has been designed to handle high volumes of users with little or no effect on performance. However, you may not be able to access certain websites if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is experiencing outages.
  • RSS: The RSS is a passive means to get information to registrants. While all notifications are posted, this service may lag behind email and text messages.
  • Twitter: Tweets may also be delayed based on Twitter’s user volume.

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are issued by local, state, and/or federal officials for significant emergencies in your area. They are broadcast from cellphone towers near an emergency and received on all cell phones that are equipped with the proper software. This is a federally mandated alert communication system, not necessarily sent by Notify NYC. Therefore, non-Notify NYC subscribers will still receive them. Examples include severe weather alerts, issued by the National Weather Service (NWS), and AMBER Alerts, issued by the New York State Police for confirmed child abductions. For more information, visit: FEMA's website.

My Preferences

There are two ways to update your account information:

  • If you enrolled online, you can update any of your account information by visiting www1.nyc.gov/notifynyc and selecting “My Account”. After clicking on “My Account” you will be asked to enter your username (email address) and password to access your account.
  • If you enrolled over the phone using the automated system, you may call 311 (TTY: 212-504-4115) to update your account information.
  • Go to the Notify NYC home page: www.nyc.gov/notifynyc.
  • Click “My Account” from the top navigation bar.
  • Enter your email address in the “Email” field.
  • Click “Forgot your password?”
  • A message will be displayed saying “An email has been sent to you containing your temporary password.Follow the link included in this email and use the temporary password to log into Notify NYC.”
  • You will be prompted to change your password after you log in.
  • You will receive a message that your password has been changed and a link to go back into your account.

Be sure your password:

  • Is eight characters or more
  • Includes a number or special character
  • Includes a letter
  • Is not your email address or first or last name
  • Does not include the word “password”

You can modify your account by logging into www1.nyc.gov/notifynyc.

To edit your account settings:

  • Click on “My Account” in the top navigation bar
  • Enter your email and password and click “Login”
  • The “Contact Points” page should be displayed. Modify any relevant account settings including adding addresses or changing notification types by using the green “+” or red “-“ icons.
  • You can also add up to five telephone numbers, and up to a total of five text based contact types such as email addresses, fax numbers, BlackBerry PIN, SMS/text-enabled telephone numbers, Instant Messenger(IM) screen names.

You can modify your account by logging into www1.nyc.gov/notifynyc.

To completely opt out of Notify NYC:

  • Click on “My Account” in the top navigation bar
  • Enter your email address and password and click “Login”.
  • On the “Contact Points: Contact Points” page, navigate to “Manage Services” on the right hand side of the page and click the green “+” sign next to “OPT OUT OF NOTIFY NYC”.
  • You are now on the “Manage Services: Opt Out of Notify NYC” page.Click or tap the checkbox “I would like to Opt Out of Notify NYC” and then click or tap the “Save” button.
  • Your account is now turned off and you will stop receiving notifications in 24 hours.Your account will be deleted after 180 days and you will no longer be able to log into this account.
  • If you attempt to re-enroll within 180 days, you will not be allowed.You must sign back into Notify NYC using your password and follow the above steps to uncheck the “Opt Out” box in step four above.

You can modify your account by logging into www1.nyc.gov/notifynyc.

To temporarily suspend your account:

  • Click on “My Account” in the top navigation bar
  • Enter your email and password and click “Login”
  • On the “Contact Points: Contact Points” page, navigate to “Manage Services” on the right hand side of the page and click the green “+” sign next to “SUSPEND SERVICE.”
  • You are now on the “Manage Services: Set and time not to receive notification” page.Enter the dates you would like your services to be suspended.The maximum duration to suspend service is six months.
  • Your account is now suspended for the time period you have selected, and you will not receive notifications. At any time, you can log in and remove your vacation settings.

You can add up to five different city addresses to your account. You can also add, remove, and edit these locations by navigating to www1.nyc.gov/notifynyc and signing into your account by clicking on “My Account” on the top navigation bar.

After you log in, you will be on the “Contact Points Page.” Navigate to the right hand section and select the green(+) sign under “Notification Addresses” to add a new address.

  • Phone: You can add up to five phone lines for voice messages. It is not required that you add a phone number.
  • You may enter up to a total of five text contacts (Email Addresses, SMS, Fax) for this account.

Yes. Notify NYC now offers subscribers the option to sign up for sign language videos.

Yes. Notify NYC currently offers most messages in fourteen languages including English and American Sign Language.

Yes. Notify NYC now offers subscribers sign language videos which are accessible via a link at the bottom of most of Notify NYC messages.

Mobile Application

The Notify NYC mobile app provides Android and iPhone users with a convenient way to access emergency notifications from their mobile device. It is an easy-to-use app that provides real-time emergency notifications about incidents and events in the user’s immediate area and throughout New York City based on selected preferences.

When you subscribe through the Notify NYC website, you are required to receive notifications based on an address or intersection. The alerts you receive will only be those that affect the addresses (you may add up to five) that you registered for, whether or not you are actually located there at the time of the incident.

When you download the Notify NYC mobile application, an address or intersection is not required. Instead, the mobile application uses geographical technology to send you notifications based on your current location. If you choose, you may also enter up to five addresses of interest on the mobile app in addition to receiving alerts regarding incidents occurring around you. For example, if you live in Queens but are visiting Times Square, you have the option to receive notifications about your home in Queens and your current location in Manhattan, all at once.

The Notify NYC mobile app is currently supported on Android devices with version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or higher, and on iPhones with iOS version 9.1 or higher.

The Notify NYC mobile app is completely free to use (but it will consume a small amount of your data in order to receive messages and communicate with the server when a Wi-Fi connection is not available). We will never ask you for payment information. There are no in-app purchases.

This app uses geo-location technology to determine a device’s approximate location in order to send relevant messages. No personal identifying information is gathered; this information is registered only as an anonymous device. The City does not have access to your name, mobile phone number, phone contacts, or saved addresses.

To download the app for Android devices, visit the Google Play Store.

To download the app for iPhone devices, visit the App Store.

You may also download the app by visiting www1.nyc.gov/connect/mobile-applications.page.

Get Notified

Download the free Notify NYC mobile app, available for iOS and Android.

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