Emergency Alerts Phoning Homes
By SHELLEY HANSON Staff WriterArticle Photos
WHEELING - Ohio County's emergency managers are working on new methods to quickly inform people of chemical spills or other potential disasters.
The first program is an automated emergency call system, City Watch, that already is in place and has been used once to inform Bethlehem residents of a waterline break.
The other method uses a radio station, AM 1700, to alert folks of potentially dire situations, said Lou Vargo, deputy director of the Wheeling-Ohio County Emergency Management Agency. Vargo said the county applied to receive a Federal Communications Commission license to use AM 1700 to broadcast emergency messages. The radio system is expected to be ready in mid-April. Vargo is working with the state Division of Highways to install related signage along the Interstates 70 and 470. The signs will have flashing lights to alert motorists when a message is playing.
Funding for both methods came from Department of Homeland Security grants that were split among Northern Panhandle counties and six other West Virginia's counties - Preston, Monongalia, Harrison, Marion, Doddridge and Taylor - that make up West Virginia Department of Homeland Security Region 2. All Northern Panhandle counties are using City Watch and AM 1700.
"We can better target a population affected as quickly as possible," Vargo said, noting Ohio County currently has two antennas - one in North Park and another at The Highlands - both with about a 3- to 5-mile range.
With City Watch, Ohio County officials are still learning the system's ins and outs, but they believe the new software will help inform residents of potential danger in a more timely manner. For example, if a chemical spill occurs in the middle of the night and an evacuation is called for, emergency officials can record a message and forward it to as many people as necessary via an automated telephone call.
Theresa Russell, director of the Wheeling-Ohio County Communications Center, said the software uses landline telephone numbers contained in the 911 center's database, which came from Verizon. A message is recorded and sent to a given area, down to a block or even individual households.
The county's first use of the system left a few Bethlehem residents upset, as some people received a call about a waterline break and loss of service about 1 a.m. But officials have since learned what went wrong. Russell said the late calls occurred because officials believed most of the village needed to be informed of the interruption in water service. This resulted in the automated system calling nearly 1,000 households. However, since Ohio County only has eight designated phone service lines to send out calls, it ended up taking a couple hours for all of the calls to reach every household, resulting in some phones ringing late at night.
System administrator Phil Redford, who also is a Wheeling police sergeant, said the program could only notify eight people at a time because the message was 25 seconds long.
"We had 1,000 people, which means it's going to take awhile doing eight at a time to notify those people," Redford said. "And that's why it's a learning experience. ... When we notified them at (11 p.m.), by the time it was all said and done, it went into 1 o'clock in the morning. We would have never, ever thought of it that way. But now we know."
Redford said he and Russell have since learned Ohio County, if necessary, can "seize" other counties' phone service lines to speed up the process. Vargo said other Northern Panhandle counties' lines can be used because they are using the same software as Ohio County. He noted Belmont County may also use the software in the future.
"We made the decision to use it that night because when Bethlehem called down and said, 'We have a water break,' people started calling us and flooding the 911 center with calls," Russell noted. "That's when we made the decision to give it a try."
Both Russell and Redford said they were sorry some residents were called so late about the water break.
"Like everything else, there's going to be some growing pains," Vargo noted.
City Watch can also be used by agencies, such as police and sheriff's deputies, to call out specific groups of people or special teams to respond to an incident.
Cell phone numbers currently are not listed in the database of call numbers.
The counties used a total of $625,525 in grant funds to purchase City Watch software and AM radio stations. A portion of the funding was used to buy generators that can be used for facilities without power, such as water pump stations during outages.
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EllisWyatt
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03-10-10 7:27 PM
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"Grant funds" are nothing more than welfare money stolen from more productive people in other states. People used to have pride. No wonder that West Virginia is at the bottom in terms of state economies.
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dyingov
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03-10-10 8:42 AM
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Spend 600k to allert me that my water might be off! I guess that is in case I'm getting ready to flush all the crap down the toilet...like the 600k flushed down the toilet. Does anyone understand that grant money is tax money!!!!
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