Weston · The city wants all current and new residents to become part of its emergency notification system.

As part of the free service, a phone call relays a taped message, to a specific area or the whole city, with important information on topics such as a boil water notice, utility outage, missing person, fire or flood, evacuation notice and route, bomb threat, hostage situation, chemical spill or gas leak, hurricane or other emergency situation.

 

Residents are asked to provide their information -- name, address with ZIP code, and primary and alternative phone numbers -- by visiting the city's Web site, or calling City Hall and asking for the communications office.

"We want residents to take the time and refresh the information, if it has changed," said Denise Barrett, the city's communications director. "People's cell phone numbers tend to change or business phone numbers, and they may have changed jobs."

Anyone not sure whether their information is updated can sign up again, as the process takes just a couple of minutes, she said.

 

Residents who live out of state part of the year can add their away numbers to the system as well.

And if you have a privacy lock on your phone, you'd need to take an extra step, Barrett said.

"The system can't circumvent that, so if you have a privacy lock and it happens to be a known event like a hurricane, turn it off," she said.

Weston instituted the CodeRED Emergency Notification System, an ultra high-speed telephone communication service, in 2003. It is capable of dialing 50,000 numbers per hour and takes about 15 minutes, including redials, to reach the 23,000 phone numbers in the city's system.

A recorded message is delivered to a person or answering machine. The system makes three attempts to contact the numbers.

"It was definitely one of our primary communication devices after the hurricane. Many people had no Internet or electricity but had their cell phone or landline working," Barrett said. "We would not just use it for anything. It's for emergencies and after emergencies. So please do not disregard it; we do not overuse the system."

To send out messages, Barrett needs to call to connect to the system, record a message, get it approved and then send it out.

"It literally takes about 10 minutes," said Barrett, who during last year's hurricanes recorded updates from home. "You can specify who do you want to call. If a water main line breaks you don't have to call the entire city. You can call residents within a 2-mile radius of the address."

CodeRED is a service of the Emergency Communications Network Inc., based in Ormond Beach. Last year, it sent out about 1.5 million emergency calls a month throughout the nation, according to David DiGiacomo, vice president of operations. So far this year, the average is more than 2 million calls monthly.

The company has a 35 percent saturation rate for counties in Florida. Clients include Broward County and 14 of its cities, Orange County, the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.

Nicole T. Lesson can be reached at nlesson@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7920.