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New CodeRED alerts residents of dangers
Suppose that flash floods developing in Rappahannock County threaten to swamp your home in the hollow. Or imagine that a chemical truck crashed on Route 211, threatening your area with a toxic cloud–or that a dangerous prisoner escaped the county jail and is on the loose.
How would you find out about these emergencies immediately and take precautions?
Up until now, officials in Rappahannock County have had no way to quickly inform all residents of such impending dangers. But now they do–in the form of a high-tech emergency communications network called CodeRED, capable of calling every telephone in the county with an emergency message, all within five minutes.
The new system, which was activated last week, has the capability to blanket the entire county with a recorded emergency message, or to target just the telephones in a specified geographic area, such as all homes in the Sperryville area, or all telephones within a three-mile radius of the county jail or a major accident or fire.
“It is really a good system, and we can use it in a lot of ways,” said Richie Burke, the county’s Emergency Management and Services Coordinator, who briefed the Board of Supervisors on the CodeRED system Monday and later demonstrated how it works for a reporter. Burke said that he will be making test calls on the system within the next two weeks, so some county residents may soon receive calls with a non-emergency test message.
Burke emphasized that there’s one important thing that county residents must do to ensure maximum effectiveness for the new system. Though most residential telephone numbers for Rappahannock County are already loaded into the system from existing databases, the county wants every household to sign up for the service by logging on to a CodeRED enrollment Web site to enter names, addresses and phone numbers–including unlisted numbers and cell phone numbers, which aren’t in the existing database. (See sign-up instructions below.)
“For years, we have had problems notifying people in the county of emergencies,” Burke told the Board of Supervisors. With the CodeRED system, which can dial 1,000 calls per minute, “we can call up the whole county in about five minutes,” he said. “It’s the best we can do without having our own TV or radio stations.”
The new system is a product of a private, Florida-based firm, Emergency Communications Network, Inc., which has been providing high-speed messaging to governments and businesses since 1996. Rappahannock County has hired the company, which has the capability to make 60,000 calls per hour, to provide the CodeRED calling system under a contract that will cost $11,250 a year–funds that were already set aside in the current budget for emergency services.
County Administrator John McCarthy said the CodeRED system is less costly and faster than other alternative systems, such as one called Reverse 911, that the county had considered. There are no upfront equipment costs, and the county won’t have to install more telephone lines, as would have been the case with Reverse 911, he said.
The CodeRED system is widely used by communities for hurricane warnings in Florida, snow emergencies in Minnesota, wildfires in the West, and by law enforcement for incidents ranging from hostage situations to jail breaks, according to the company.
Under the system, five Rappahannock officials will be authorized to record and send out emergency messages: Burke, his deputy Frank Huff, Sheriff Connie Compton Smith, her deputy Major Scott Jenkins and McCarthy. They can initiate emergency calls, and define the area to be called–either the whole county or just portions of it–by using the company’s Internet portal or by telephone.
“We can do it from anywhere,” said Burke. “I can do it with a telephone only, or from any Internet connection.” The notification system can also be used for internal purposes by county agencies–for instance, if the sheriff needs to urgently call all Sheriff’s Office employees to report to work immediately because of an emergency, or if McCarthy needs to instantly reach all county employees for any purpose.
When emergency calls go out, county residents in the designated area will hear the recorded voices of Burke, Sheriff Smith or one of the other authorized users, informing them of an incident or weather condition posing risks. The system keeps track of how many of those calls are answered–either by a person or an answering machine–and allows officials to “relaunch” a repeat call-out to phones that were not answered, if they wish.
“I would hope to get 70 percent or 80 percent of the calls answered,” Burke said, to assure that the vast majority of the population actually received the emergency message.
The CodeRED database already includes more than 5,200 phone numbers for Rappahannock County, Burke said. These numbers were loaded into the system from existing databases, such as the county’s 911 database, and from commercial databases that the company accesses. Nationally, CodeRED maintains a database of 160 million phone numbers, according to the company.
But the Rappahannock database does not include many cell phone numbers or unlisted numbers, and some of the data may be outdated. For that reason, county officials urge every resident of Rappahannock to provide their current information–name, address, phone numbers and other information to the CodeRED system, to insure maximum accuracy and comprehensiveness.
The best way to do this is via Internet, by going to the county's Web site: rappahannockcountyva.gov
On the county’s home page, click on “Links,” and on that page under “Emergency Planning Information,” click on the CodeRed link for “Community Notification Enrollment;” enter your information on the enrollment form to update the existing database so it includes any phone numbers you might want to be called, including a work phone or cell phone as well as home phone. Entering address information is important to enable you to receive notifications that may go out to only a specified portion of the county, using the system’s address mapping system.
Internet users also may enroll through the Web sites of the Sperryville and Washington fire companies, at www.sperryvillefire.com and www.washingtonvolunteerfireandrescue.org
Rappahannock residents who do not have access to the Internet may contact Burke’s office in Washington by phone (540) 675-5340 or visit at 311-H Gay Street, to obtain a paper-copy form on which to provide their data, which Burke will enter into the CodeRED system.
In addition to making calls using recorded notices from county officials, the system includes the CodeRED Weather Warning system to alert local residents of dangerous weather conditions. The weather calls deliver targeted weather notifications for the immediate threats of severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flood warnings and tornado warnings within moments of being issued by the National Weather Service (NWS).
CodeRED Weather Warning will deliver a pre-recorded alert message directly to residents' phones in the projected path of the severe weather. The system automatically sends these notifications without any effort from the county staff 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, providing residents the needed time to prepare. This becomes even more critical if a tornado comes through an area during the night, when television, radio broadcasts and sirens are ineffective.
James P. Gannon is editor of rappvoice.com
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