Emergency Management Director Hal Schulman unveils expanded emergency notification program in the works. ______________________________________________________________________________________
By Pauline Masson
As of now there are 1,176 names on the City of Pacific emergency notification list. But that’s about to change.
Emergency Management Director Hal Schulman spelled out the details of the new expanded emergency notification program at the September 16 Board of Aldermen (BOA) meeting.
Mr. Schulman gave aldermen a look at the upgraded emergency notification system that is growing exponentially as he taps the full kit and caboodle of federal, state, county and city emergency alert databases and programs.
Pacific is in the process of changing its citizen notification system from its current provider, Regroup, to the Franklin County Onsolve CodeRED notification system. The change becomes effective September 29.
“All contacts from Regroup will automatically be ported into the new system,” Mr. Schulman said. “As of today, that count is 1,176 people.
Pacific has a current population of 7,734, According to World Population Review, which includes 6,227 adults. If we deduct the 1,100 persons incarcerated in the Missouri Eastern Correction Center, Pacific has an adult population of 5,127.
In the recent water boil advisory, 784 persons were notified of the water boil advisory by phone, leaving 4,343 who were not notified.
“With the Onsolve system we shall soon have in place a modern, competitive, feature rich product offering us myriad capabilities we do not currently have with our Regroup contract,“ Mr. Schulman said.
Examples of new features the city will acquire include Geo Fencing, which provides more selective message targeting, such as a single industrial park or a specific subdivision area.
“If we need to request an evacuation just for Jefferson Street businesses, we can do so,” Mr. Schulman said,
Pacific will acquire a data set of so-called public numbers purchased from Onsolve, offering the city the ability to send a message to an expanded set of local phone numbers, even if they have not opted in.
These additional contacts would include national white and yellow page listings, state and federal public records, for example, from deed filings, secretary of state records, for example, business registrations, publicly available information from other marketing or call companies, and information from surveys and other open data.
An additional new feature Pacific will have is access to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) emergency alert coverage to recipients even if they have not opted in as a contact like an Amber Alert.
The city will have the capability to issue a variety of other things via IPAWS, through cell phones. Landlines must be handled through a third-party software.
“Think of the expanded public numbers that we’re going to have available for the next high level of more important or moderate type alerts and warnings we want to get word out to,”Mr. Schulman said. “We have about 4,800 of those in the Pacific area currently.”
“Having these public numbers is a huge leap forward from what we do not have today,” he stressed.
The current package is based on a Franklin County contract and does not include St. Louis County.
The economic development director said he is also analyzing 2,100 records from the City of Pacific water sewer billing system and 2,378 personal property tax records from Franklin County Assessor.
The process to format, sort, compare all these records has begun, but it will take some time The first step is to actually implement the porting of our existing contacts into the County CodeRed system. But Mr. Schulman said he expects some positive results from that possibly by the end of next month.
Throughout his presentation, Mr. Schulman stressed that none of the databases or contact lists are guaranteed to include every contact in the designated area, To be assured that they are included in the emergency alerts, citizens are urged to sign in, which they can do on the City’s web page.
“Regardless of which EMS pro mass notification system product we use, it is only one piece of our city’s broad set of public information alerting and warning tools we use,” he said. “Others include Facebook pages, city website, our outdoor warning siren system, and news media to name a few.”
“I’d like to leave you with one overarching mantra from the emergency management world and it is this. for everyone, and I do mean everyone, to ensure they take responsibility for their own emergency readiness, awareness, and plans to address the unexpected.”
“If you have not already signed up for our current emergency mass notification system and regroup, I urge you not to wait any longer and do so now,” he said. “However, I ask that you create your login in our new system Onsolve CodeRed at this point in time since we’re only two weeks away from full implementation.
In order to confirm that the new system is successfully loaded with all expected contacts, Mr. Schulman said he was planning to conduct a few tests during the week of September 28th.
Alderman Debbie Kelley asked whether the advanced media alerts would bypass the City Public and Works Department’s responsibility to notify citizens.
“Just to clarify, if there is something going to happen with Public Works, where they will notify the homeowners if there’s a water shut off, or water line change, your system will not override what he needs to directly do door to door,” she asked.
“Public Works will still do their job,” Mr.Schulman said.
Mayor Heather Filley echoed Mr. Schulman’s assurance.
“If there’s a situation where public works needs to notify door to door or other things, that will still take place,” she said. “In addition then Mr. Brueggemann will let Mr. Schulman know and he can put it out as well to the specific area that could be affected.”
https://www.franklinmo.org/emergency-management-agency Here is the link for the Franklin Co Mo system and registration.
For all who opt to enroll, the new registration page is at https://accountportal.onsolve.net/franklincountymo_pacific.
Or feel free to send your information to [email protected] and I will do it for you.