Public Notification of Emergency Disasters
The City uses commercial radio and television stations for emergency broadcasts. Police and Fire officials, who have public address systems on their vehicles, are the backup communication link if the commercial radio and television stations go down. The public address system on vehicles is a manpower intensive method for alerting the public. In addition, the City has installed its own AM radio station (AM 1700), allowing emergency information to be broadcast during times of emergencies. Though this is a step forward, power outages will minimize the effectiveness of radio and TV notifications during an emergency.
The Office of Emergency Management also has a telephone emergency notification system to provide emergency information to City staff and citizens in times of disaster. However, this system is only accessible to those who have phone numbers listed in the Verizon phone book. With more of our citizens using cell phones, a system needs to be developed to allow emergency notification through cell phones. This project again will be a manpower intensive project since poling and keeping up with changes to the data base will be significant.
A citizen based emergency notification system should be developed to improve the way citizens are kept informed during emergencies. This can be done by forming Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) and training citizens participating in the teams. CERT programs are successfully used for citizen notification in Williamsburg, Hampton, York County, James City County, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Gloucester, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach. With the new addition of an additional staff member and current City staff trained and certified to conduct necessary citizen based training this program will begin development and implementation in fiscal year 2009.