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	Franklin County, Kansas, USA

2009-07-03

2009-07-01

2009-06-30

Agriculture

Lifestyles

New ‘reverse 911’ feature could save lives

By CLEON RICKEL, Herald Senior Writer

GARNETT — A new “reverse 911” feature will allow the National Weather Service to reach out and touch someone in Anderson County — before a tornado does.

Whenever a tornado or severe storm threatens communities or rural residents, the system will telephone Weather Service warnings to people in its path within a matter of minutes, Marvin Grimes, Anderson County emergency management director, said.

“This will allow our residents extra time for preparation that can save lives,” Grimes said.

Although there’s no charge for the service, anyone who wants it must sign up for it, Grimes said.

Residents can either sign up by going to the county’s Web site at www.andersoncountyks.org and clicking on the Emergency Management buttons, or pick up forms at Garnett City Hall, Garnett Library, from Grimes or the county engineer’s office at the county annex in Garnett, Colony City Hall, Greeley City Hall, Kincaid City Hall, the Welda Post Office or the co-op office at Westphalia.

If no one answers, the system either will leave a message on any answering machine or redial up to three times, J.D. Mersman, emergency management deputy director, said.

However, some home wireless phones use a base system that must be plugged in so if the house loses electrical power, so does the phone, and the system can’t reach it, he said.

The telephone weather-alert system is based on one used in Allen County, Mersman said.

“Allen County used it a lot last week,” Grimes said, referring to a series of severe storms that battered that county.

The weather-alert system is an expansion to Anderson County’s reverse 911 system provided by the Code Red company and which went operational last year shortly after the severe mid-summer flooding last year, Grimes said. The Code Red system allows the emergency center to call everyone simultaneously with a prerecorded message.

The system can be tailored to call people in specific cities or rural areas, he said.

The county used the system to send out flooding information. When parts of the city of Garnett had an electrical blackout last summer, officials used the system to alert city residents that an emergency center had been set up at the Anderson County Junior Senior High School.

Although everyone must sign up for the weather calls, all Anderson County telephone land lines were automatically put into the regular Code Red reverse 911 system, he said.

Cell phone users must sign up to be included in the regular Code Red system and for the weather alerts, he said.

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