County prepares for emergencies

Pierce County is organizing a public safety work group to develop guidelines on the use of the telephone emergency notification system that quickly delivers messages to thousands of residents. The county’s Department of Emergency Management is leading the effort.

During emergencies, the county will use its Intrado Target Notification System to call residents with a recorded message to warn them about situations that may arise and to provide information.

The software enables emergency notification of residents within prescribed areas determined by incident commanders. The software accesses the 911 database to reach every household with an interactive community notification system. The area may be as isolated as a neighborhood or as large as a city.

“We have used this tool several hundred times over the last several years, to warn citizens about floods, hazardous material releases, missing children and medically fragile adults. And we have had great results,” said Steve Bailey, director of the Department of Emergency Management.

The county’s new work group also will be charged with developing approaches to educate Pierce County residents on how this important emergency information notification system works.

“This ability to alert our citizens to an ongoing public safety issue is an important and powerful tool that has saved lives and property,” Bailey said. “Every emergency situation is different, so flexibility is a requirement. But some guidance and uniformity may be helpful to our field emergency incident commanders.”

The Sheriff’s Department has had several successful outcomes in the implementation of Target Notification. During the severe flooding events of last January, thousands of calls were made to households threatened by the flooding of the Puyallup, Carbon and White rivers. Some of these calls were evacuation notices.

Other warnings have included notification about a missing South Hill-area 16-year-old last November, who was found after the Sheriff’s Department requested the interactive community notification that went out to 6,764 phones. Another incident included notification of a 75-year-old Alzheimer’s patient from Spanaway, who went missing in a 40-square-block area. The man was found, suffering from hypothermia because he was not dressed for the elements.

Correction

Reverse 911 is a registered trademark of Plant Equipment Inc. References to Reverse 911 should be used exclusively within reference to Plant CML products and services.

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