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Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

Emergency alert system approved for Houston County

PERRY — The next time severe weather heads toward Houston County, its residents will get a clear warning.

The Houston County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to implement an emergency alert system that will notify residents three different ways when severe weather threatens the county.

“I’m very happy to get that under way,” commission Chairman Ned Sanders said after the vote.

The alert system will work like a “three-legged stool,” said Commissioner Larry Thomson.

He said residents would get warnings through sirens that will be placed throughout the county, a phone list that residents can sign up for to receive alerts and through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-powered radios that can be purchased at discounted rates. The different options were needed to make sure every resident could get a warning, he said.

“Sirens are great but not when you might not be able to hear it,” Thomson said. “We found one (option) just won’t do it all. We just tried to plug every hole we could.”

Thomson said the commission had been looking into several alert systems for quite some time. Voters last November approved a half-mill tax increase to pay for the system. Thomson said the system will cost the county $1.5 million, which includes about $51,000 annually for five years for the system’s operation.

CodeRED, the component of the system that provides the mass calling, also includes notifications by phone for residents when other important events — Amber Alerts, toxic spills or police chases — affect parts of or the entire county. Calls can be sent to specific portions of the county that would be affected by traveling weather patterns or other newsworthy events.

Officials in Pickens County in north Georgia say they have already had good results with their CodeRED system, which that county started using in April. A message about a thunderstorm warning for the county recently was relayed to nearly 20,000 phones.

“It’s worked beautifully,” said Lee Sanders, the director of Pickens County’s 911. “We think it’s great.”

But, Sanders said, it’s been hard to get people to sign up for the phone service.

The 15,000 residences in Pickens County with published numbers were automatically signed up for emergency alert calls through the local 911 system. The rest have come through enrollment calls and sign-up sheets printed in the local paper.

Thomson said Houston officials are hoping half the county will be signed up for the phone alerts within the next month. Phone calls alerting residents to severe weather patterns traveling across parts of the county will begin in the next two months.

To contact writer Marlon A. Walker, call 923-6199, extension 235.