NEWS

Test use of CodeRED emergency system called a success

Peter Johnson
pjohnson@greatfallstribune.com

Some 30,000 Cascade County residents and businesses were deluged with phone calls, emails and texts in just 20 minutes Wednesday morning as Cascade County and the Great Falls gave its new CodeRED emergency notification service its first big trial run.

"I'm highly satisfied with how it went,"said Kristal Kuhn, the city's emergency management planner, after the service made 30,000 calls in the first 20 minutes, about 6,000 over the goal.

"We've never had a way to reach nearly all residents and businesses in the county in a matter of minutes," added Bill Hunter, 911 communications manager.

City emergency management planner Kristal Kuhn’s cellphone was one of many across Cascade County to receive a 60-second test call Wednesday morning from the county’s new emergency notification system.

Employees with the dispatch center's provider, Emergency Communications Network, launched the emergency test calls from the Florida headquarters at 9:45 a.m. as Great Falls officials at the dispatch center on Gore Hill watched as the results quickly climbed on a computer screen and image mounted on the wall.

The local dispatch center will send out its own messages in a real emergency, using pre-recorded messages for some 20 emergency scenarios, or voicing new emergency response details on the fly, Kuhn said.

Residents and businesses can be notified by telephone, cellphone, text message, email and social media giving details about an emergency and how they should respond, such as staying in place and shutting down their ventilation systems if factory fumes are hitting their neighborhood or evacuating in case of a fire or flood nearby. The whole county can be notified, or particular neighborhoods, such as during a localized crime situation.

Kristal Kuhn, emergency management planner for the city of Great Falls, explains the new CodeRED emergency notification service during the system’s test-run Wednesday morning. Some 30,000 phone calls were made during the first 20 minutes of the test.

"Today, at full capacity, the system should be able to reach 1,500 lines per 60 second call," with some 24,000 calls made in the first 20 minutes, Kuhn said ahead of time.

That's much quicker than calling manually and allows dispatchers to spend time during emergencies on other vital tasks, Hunter said. It takes about three minutes per call for a dispatcher to call, inform and answer a resident's questions.

After 20 minutes, during the first of three rounds of calling and emailing, the emergency phone service made 30,000 phone calls and reached about 10,000 residences and businesses in which it delivered a message either live or to a recorded message. Other delivered calls were either operator interrupted, busy or kept ringing. The system goes through three rounds, repeating calls to numbers it couldn't reach.

A caller told the Tribune her 90-year-old mother was confused by the 60-second, recorded call, saying it was quick and difficult to hear.

Kuhn noted that the test occurred mid-morning on a weekday, when most people are at work. The completion rate also could be increased if follks register their unlisted numbers and cell phone numbers, she said.

How to register for emergency database

CodeRED will serve as the backbone of Cascade County's emergency planning and communications warnings for residents and businesses, officials said, but it's only as good as the information in the 911 phone data base providing ways to reach folks.

If city and county residents' and businesses' phone numbers are not in the 911 database, they will not receive the urgent emergency messages, said Kristal Kuhn, the city's emergency management planner.

In particular, businesses and individuals should be sure to register if they have unlisted phone numbers, have changed their phone numbers recently, use cell phones exclusively or have VoIP cell service, such as through Vonage or Charter.

Register online at www.greatfallsmt.net or www.cascadecountymt.gov. These sites have a link to lead them to the CodeRED registration page. The CodeRED database may already contain some information for residents — such as a land-line number. Residents can enter multiple phone numbers and email addresses. If a person does not have access to a computer, they can call the DES Office at 454-6900 or the city of Great Falls emergency planner at 455-8579 for assistance.