Sunday, May 02, 1999
Boone to use phone alerts
System calls thousands in emergency
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BURLINGTON — It may not alert residents of an impending tornado, but a new Boone County emergency telephone notification system could help with other problems that arise with severe weather.
“We can notify people of the level of a particular creek and that there could be flash flooding,” said Bill Fletcher, deputy director of Boone County Emergency Management.
Boone County will be the first county in Kentucky to use the Community Alert Network (CAN), a service that can notify 12,000 people per hour by telephone of emergencies like chemical spills and flooding. It can also help relay information about long-term power outages, gas leaks and boil water advisories.
“We have provided our 911 database of every phone in Boone County and geographic information to the CAN company,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Their system is online and ready for use.”
About 12 county employees will be trained in mid-May on how to notify CAN operators in an emergency, and the service should be ready for use by June 1. It costs $11,700 annually to operate.
“It's another tool in our toolbox that we're going to use to attempt to notify everyone,” Mr. Fletcher said.
Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties use outdoor warning sirens to notify residents of fast-moving weather emergencies. Kenton county officials recently proposed a plan that would bring 42 new sirens to the county by next storm season. The county has 18 now.
Mr. Flether said implementing the CAN system will not affect the use of sirens in Boone County.
“Storms are pretty erratic,” Mr. Fletcher said. “With a tornado, we'd have to track it and we don't have that capability.”
The Community Alert Network divides the county in a grid so operators can notify residents in certain neighborhoods or along certain roads. When residents are contacted they will hear a recorded mes sage.
After the message is over, residents will be asked to enter a code to indicate whether they understood the message and another if they need help.
“The company will fax us a form that says how the calls were answered,” Mr. Fletcher said.
If a resident needs assistance, emergency management officers can call police.
CAN President Ken Baechel said the system has been used in 39 states and four Canadian provinces.
“Last year we responded to between 600 and 700 events in the United States and Canada,” he said. “It helped save lives with flooding in California and chemical spills all over the country, as well as fires.”
CAN notified 9,600 people in Alaska last year in less than an hour after an explosion at a fish hatchery. It also advised victims of the 1994 Northridge, Calif., earthquake where to go for food and shelter.
CAN has also alerted communities of missing children and escaped prisoners.
“Our beginning as a company started as a result of the missing child issue,” Mr. Baechel said.
CAN was started in 1984 in upstate New York as the Missing Child Network, and later expanded to other emergency services.
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