County residents register for emergency calling

At present, 208 Wahkiakum County residents have taken advantage of an Emergency Community Notification System offered through the Wahkiakum’s Sheriff’s Office, Department of Emergency Management, that sends emergency phone calls to their cell phones.

“We want to encourage everybody to sign up, so we can get a hold of everyone in the event of an emergency,” said Beau Renfro, coordinator of Wahkiakum County’s Department of Emergency Management.

Wahkiakum County residents can be part of the county’s emergency community warning system that sends emergency messages via telephone, cellular phone, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) devices to residents and businesses when an event may affect them.

A telephone emergency notification system is already programmed to call landline phone numbers (both listed and unlisted) from phone company records. But if you are away from home when messages are sent and have a cell phone, you could receive the message immediately on your cell.

Using an email address, residents sign up listing the cell phones they want called, and then they are alerted when there is an emergency event in the associated street address they have listed.

A person might list several cell phones in order to make sure that a caregiver was notified as well as a family member of an elder or disabled person who needed help, Renfro said.

In addition to learning of a hazard near your home or business, such as fire, hazardous materials release, or police response activities, one might receive instructions for protective measures during a disaster, or a call from police needing help to solve a crime or find missing persons.

The process is very simple for people comfortable with internet-based services and is free.

If an answering machine picks up the emergency call from the automated system, it leaves a message. If the number is busy or does not answer, the system will make two additional attempts. The system can contact TTY/TDD devices used by the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

The Wahkiakum County Emergency Community Notification System is provided by Twenty First Century Communications of Columbus, Ohio. New account information is loaded into a secure data base only once per month.

See http://www.co.wahkiakum.wa.us/depts/sheriff/EmergencyComunityNotification.htm for more information or call Beau Renfro at (360) 795-3242. For additional emergency information see Washington State Emergency Management Division Website: http://www.emd.wa.gov or http://www.fema.gov.