In a disaster or a pinch, Lake Oswego has system

Emergency - A new response system could phone everyone in town in about a half-hour

Thursday, December 01, 2005

LISA GRACE LEDNICER

The humble emergency message board and elaborately diagrammed phone tree are going high-tech.

Lake Oswego is about to adopt a new emergency response system called CodeRED that speed-dials residents to warn them of emergencies such as a natural disaster or a missing child. Lake Oswego will be the first city in Oregon to use the technology, which relies on a database run by Emergency Communications Network based in Ormond Beach, Fla.

Residents who wish to be called can sign up by submitting their addresses and home phone numbers to the city via its Web site, www.ci.oswego.or.us. There is no cost to join. Officials hope residents will submit cell phone numbers as well, since those numbers can't be gleaned from a phone book.

Police and firefighters until now have relied on a door-to-door approach to alert homeowners to natural gas leaks or imminent flooding. The new system can call 1,000 phone numbers a minute, allowing emergency dispatchers to contact everyone in the city of 35,930 in about a half-hour.

"This is a great upgrade in our ability to get information to the public on a more timely basis," said Larry Goff, a battalion chief with the Lake Oswego Fire Department. "It will never eliminate having to make door-to-door calls, but it will give us the ability to decide who to focus on first."

Lake Oswego has entered into a two-year contract with Emergency Communications Network to supply the city with software and technical support, which includes mapping technology, for $7,000 a year.

The system operates in dozens of cities, said David DiGiacomo, the company's vice president of operations. Government workers in Florida's Broward County recently used it to warn residents as Hurricane Wilma approached. It also was used in Illinois to tell residents what to do with their trash when workers for Waste Management went on strike.

"As soon as other cities in Oregon hear the success stories, it'll spread," DiGiacomo predicted. "People like it because it's an inexpensive solution to get targeted information out."