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New emergency management system should benefit everyone
Jackson County has had some isolated flooding recently, even during the driest summer any of us can remember. From the Balsam Mountain Preserve dam break in June through the second Cripple Creek high water event in July to the early-August cloudburst over Pumpkintown, those affected spent some anxious hours.
With the advent of emergency management’s CodeRED targeted telephone warning system, however, officials should have a better way of pinpointing which residents will be impacted by a rainfall event, a chemical spill or a forest fire. The Internet-based system will allow county personnel to highlight the affected area on a map, which will trigger automatic telephone calls to everyone who lives in the area.
If evacuation is recommended, the message will simultaneously tell everyone in the neighborhood and provide them with directions to a shelter. If an emergency is flood or fire-related, the message could alert residents as to what to do and which routes are safe to travel.
However, according to Emergency Management Coordinator Todd Dillard, the new system will only be as good as the numbers and physical addresses stored in the database. For that reason, he is asking every single citizen and business owner to go online and register their contact numbers and addresses (no post office boxes can be accepted). Cell phone numbers are fine as long as they are matched to a physical address. The system can call both a home phone and a cell phone, if that’s the best way to ensure that contact is made in the event of an emergency.
Those without Internet access may call the Jackson County Emergency Management Office and register addresses and phone numbers for the new system by telephone.
All information that is provided will be kept strictly confidential, Dillard said.
Considering the potential benefits to all county residents, the $7,500-per-year price tag seems like a real bargain.
We can only imagine how helpful such a targeted warning system could have been during the last real countywide emergencies – 2004’s back-to-back Hurricanes Frances and Ivan. With Ivan’s torrential rains and some roads under water – or missing, as in the case of sections of N.C. 107 and N.C. 281 – such a system could have provided much-needed information in a timely fashion.
CodeRED sounds like a good investment to us.
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