Alert Collier is the County's New Emergency Notification System

Collier County on Wednesday unveiled a new emergency notification system, designed to inform residents who sign up voluntarily about severe storms, evacuation notices, floods and brush fires.

The location-based free service, called Alert Collier, will allow county officials to send mass alerts to subscribers via text messages, phone calls, emails and hearing impaired devices.

"Severe weather alerts, that's certainly one of the things that we deem as most important," said Dan Summers, director of Collier County’s bureau of emergency services, during a news conference Wednesday.

Those can include watches and warnings for hurricanes, tornadoes, and flash floods.

County officials will be able to tailor the notifications based on geography, Summers said. 

Dan Summers, director of Collier County’s bureau of emergency services, presents the county’s new emergency notification system during a press conference Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019, at the Collier County Emergency Services Center.

"So that we essentially can draw a circle on a map and notify everyone within that circle or within that square," he said.

The alert system is part of a state-funded initiative that began in 2016. Collier is joining 63 other counties that are using the service. 

Summers said the county decided to wait to implement Alert Collier partly because officials wanted to see how it worked for other municipalities across the state.

"We wanted to observe some actions, see how it did, how it performed," he said.

Additionally, Summers said, putting the system into place took time, including getting the website ready.

The new system will replace Collier's old notification service, known as CodeRED. Naples and Marco Island, for instance, still use that system.

Some of the advantages to Alert Collier, Summers said, are that it is funded through the state and that it doesn't overwhelm local phone networks, something that can happen with CodeRED.

"During times of a disaster, the last thing you want to do is saturate or lock out of a local phone system," he said.

Alert Collier also allows for more customization for the subscriber, Summers said.

When residents first sign up for the service, the system simultaneously tests every device a user has added to make sure they work, said William Lang, emergency management warning coordinator for the county.

"But in a true event we have the ability to set intervals," he said. "So it may hit your cellphone first. We want to give you some time to get to your cellphone and respond."

Collier's system is intended as a supplemental service to other alert systems, including the National Weather Service. The weather-related information is fed into the system from the NWS automatically, which can lead to some redundancies, Summers said.

"Not one form of communication can reach everyone," he said. "We want you to have multiple forms of alert notification."

As brush fire season looms, Summers said the new system will not only allow the county to notify residents about a blaze but also enable officials to refine the message to blast out evacuations.

"In addition to that we're being much more sensitive to the concern that we can also give you an all-clear," he said. "And in many cases in previous wildfire events, we did not give you an all-clear sign."

With the system evolving, future notices could also include boil water alerts, major power outages and road closures and, in coordination with the Collier County Sheriff's Office, any law enforcement-related concerns.

A feature of the new system will allow those residents that are not signed up permanently to opt in for specific events, Summers said.

"So if you don't have us every day logged into your system, we can get to you on short notice and you can participate in that alert notification action," he said.

Alert Collier will also allow officials to reach the county's Spanish-speaking population.

"The system provides us an opportunity to either do some automated translation or we'll build a library of second-language alert notifications," Summers said.

Source: Naples Daily News - 01-30-2019