The feds have launched a major push to upgrade the 911 system across the country — including the Big Apple — with the vital ability to receive text messages, videos and photos during emergencies.

"It’s hard to imagine that airlines can send text messages if your flight is delayed, but you can’t send a text message to 911 in an emergency," said incredulous FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.

The Federal Communications Commission this week announced the move to fix the critical flaw in the antiquated emergency-call systems, as well as help provide technology to pinpoint every cell-phone caller’s location.

"The unfortunate truth is that the capability of our emergency response communications has not ... kept pace with what ordinary people now do every day with communications devices. The shift ... can’t be about if — but about when and how."

Officials said the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 underscored the dire need for the move — as students trapped in classrooms couldn’t risk speaking into their cellphones but would have been able to text their location.

A crazed gunman killed 32 people at the school.

"Those kids in the library were texting 911, and the calls went absolutely nowhere," said Judy Flores, director of the 911 call center in rural Blackhawk County, Iowa, which in 2009 became the first emergency call center in the country able to receive texts.

"In all honesty, I’m surprised that a lot of people don’t have [the capacity]," she told The Post. "It really wasn’t difficult. Our phone vendor had to do some upgrades on our software."

For the past four years, Mayor Bloomberg has repeatedly said that he hopes to make texting to 911 a reality.

But the city’s efforts to even get a back-up 911 call center and better caller-tracking system in place have been repeatedly hampered by budget and technology snafus, hurting the plan for 911 texting, too, sources say.

There’s also just the sheer, humungous size of the city’s emergency system and related equipment.

In terms of sending video and photos to 911, the best the city can offer to date is having a caller phone 911 and then be instructed on how to send them to another center.

The feds said they hope to help cities such as New York upgrade their systems by providing technology and tech support, standards to go by, a way to better coordinate 911 centers with each other and some cost work-ups on models for Congress to consider for funding.

Genachowski said the new systems would be crucial, for example, during car accidents or "if an incident commander had instant access to multiple video streams and sources of information during an armed robbery."

"With [Next Generation] 911, somebody in the car could send pictures of injuries and the scene to 911, which EMTs could review in advance. Once on scene, EMTs could send critical information back to the hospital, including on-site scans and diagnostic information, increasing odds of recovery," he said.

Dispatchers would be able to "access hospital capacity data, real-time road and traffic conditions, and video of the crash scene from traffic cameras to decide who to dispatch and where crash victims should be transported."

He added that about 50 percent of 911 calls come from cell phones — "but the location information you receive for mobile is not nearly as good as what you receive for a landline 911 call."

Additional reporting by David Seifman