BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — A Buffalo nonprofit's service outage has forced it to spend thousands of dollars to keep residents safe at a senior housing building on the city's East Side.
Matt Urban Human Services says the building's fire panel has been out of service for weeks. Executive Director Ryan Undercoffer said the nonprofit first became aware of the issue in late February.
"To staff the building 24 hours a day, to have people doing rounds and make sure everyone is safe and make sure there are no emergencies to date has cost us about $14,000," Undercoffer said.
The organization says those costs could rise to about $22,000 by March 27 if the issue is not resolved. Undercoffer said that money could go toward programs and services for clients.
"That's like a year's worth of rent, or the amount of food and clothing, and just staffing for case management to provide," Undercoffer said. "It's not fun to think about when you're having to expend it on something out of your control.
WATCH: Nonprofit says Verizon outage forcing costly fire watch at Buffalo senior housing building
Undercoffer said he believes Verizon is responsible, though the company says it is still determining whether the building's fire panel is connected to its equipment.
"It would be nice to have a little clearer understanding," Undercoffer said.
After this story originally aired, a Verizon spokesperson sent the following statement:
Our team immediately offered an alternate solution to residential customers after the water main situation began. On March 18, we were on site to provide a temporary solution for the four impacted lines, which included one elevator monitoring line and two voice lines. It was also determined that the fourth line, labeled "fire alarm panel," was not connected to any system or monitoring network - nor was it a Verizon system. This was confirmed by the alarm company vendor onsite. At the customer's request, we connected the fire alarm panel to a temporary solution and tested with them to confirm it was working. The alarm vendor will shortly migrate the facility to the new system. We continue our work on the original equipment and will ensure it’s fully repaired from the water main break damage.
