911 Communications Manager Craig Larsen discusses the benefits of the CodeRED system during a visit by The Chronicle in 2013.
Not long after a wildfire broke out Sunday afternoon in a wooded area off Gish Road near Onalaska, hundreds of phones started ringing.
Working together, the Lewis County Department of Emergency Management and Lewis County 911 Communications sent notifications through landlines, cellphones and email to more than 580 people in the Gish Road and Clark Road area Sunday afternoon, warning them about the growing blaze.
“It’s pretty indispensable to have some kind of reverse messaging system,” said 911 Communications Manager Craig Larson. “We’re geared up to take the calls, but when we know there’s an emergency going on, it’s difficult to get the information out.”
On Sunday, Lewis County Sheriff’s Office deputies and command staff knocked on doors to warn residents closest to the fire, but relied on the CodeRED system to notify residents farther from the flames.
“What a valuable tool that was,” said Sheriff Rob Snaza. “It works.”
The CodeRED system automatically includes listed landline phone numbers. Area residents can also register their cell phones and email addresses to get text or email notifications.
“Our notification is only as good as the information we have,” Larson said. “If we have your information, we can get you notified. If we don’t have the information, hopefully you’ll hear it from your neighbor.”
Larson said he doesn’t get a lot of direct feedback from county residents on the system, but said the number of registrations generally increases after an emergency.
Lewis County pays $12,500 per year to subscribe to the CodeRED system, Larson said. Registration is free for area residents.
That buys the county a pool of phone minutes, he said. For example, a 30-second message sent to 1,000 people costs the county 500 minutes. Texts and emails don’t subtract from the county’s total pool of minutes.
Currently, the county only uses the system to alert residents to an emergency. They rely on news media and other organizations to update residents on the fires or other disasters, Larson said.
Mansfield said he hopes to either use the system to give residents an all-clear message, or to set up a call line for residents to get updated information about emergencies.
The CodeRED system can alert everyone in the county, or operators can designate specific areas to target. They can choose an address and instruct the CodeRED system to alert everyone within a mile or two of that address, or use roads, neighborhoods, or political boundaries, such as water districts, as a boundary for the notification.
“So what I had is a rectangle and the fire was right in the middle,” said DEM Director Steve Mansfield. “Then that rectangle designates who gets called. They could be in Alaska and their cellphone would go off.”
The CodeRED system tracks how many calls are completed, Larson said. If less than 60 percent of calls go through, it automatically redials the numbers not reached.
“We get some pretty instant gratification,” he said. “I’m able to tell how many calls were completed, how were they completed, were they answered by a person, did they go to a messaging system.”
To sign up for CodeRED, go to http://lewiscountywa.gov/911/911-code-red.
