Customer Spotlight: Warren County, NJ

Warren County is located in northwestern New Jersey and encompasses 22 municipalities consisting of townships, cities, towns, boroughs and villages in a 363 square mile area. The Rapid Notify system enables the Warren County Office of Emergency Management to contact over 110,000 area residents in the event of an extreme emergency situation.

Warren County teamed up with the local Merrill Creek Dam to purchase the system with funding in part provided by Federal Homeland Security grants.

The County primarily uses the Rapid Notify system in situations such as heavy snowstorms and flooding.  The system proved to be valuable in 2011 with Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.

Through the newly-integrated online self-registration portal, Warren County residents can now sign up to receive emergency alert notifications on their cell phone as well as unlisted landline number.  Self-registrant addresses are periodically geo-coded into the Rapid Notify mapping system, enabling more precise alert targeting based on proximity to an emergency situation.

“I am very happy with the Rapid Notify system,” said Bill Hunt, Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator for Warren County Office of Emergency Management. “You push the button and it’s done. The speed of the system is amazing.”

In an emergency situation, the OEM coordinator for each municipality is directed to specify the message content and the area to be alerted and forward the information to the county office, which is then sent out on their behalf.

Now the County is encouraging its municipalities to establish sub-accounts to enable communications on a more relevant local level.  Allamuchy Township has just signed on and will soon have the ability to load its own contact lists and messages.

The County holds the master account, giving “parent” oversight control of all contact lists and alert messages, while giving municipal sub-accounts “child” level control over their own individual contact lists.  The “child” sub-account contacts can be alerted separately by local officials or all together by the master county account.  This helps to unify all communication channels into a single system to simplify activation, ensure message consistency and reduce alerting time.

Rapid Notify 2011 – A Retrospective

On behalf of our entire team, I want to take this opportunity to wish all our valued clients a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year, and to thank you for giving our team at Rapid notify the opportunity to serve your Mass Notification needs over this past year.

2011 was an exciting year for Rapid Notify.  We have implemented a number of recent system enhancements and exciting new options that you may not be aware of.

Our brand new Automated Severe Weather Warnings option delivers precision-targeted alert notifications via SMS Text and/or email just moments after being issued by the National Weather Service.

The new optional Inbound 800 Number feature provides customers a dedicated 800 number for callers to hear your latest recorded message.

SMS Text Messaging is now fully enabled for all of our Canadian customers. Contact us for current pricing.

Rapid Notify now offers you the ability to have an Alert Summary PDF and CSV file sent immediately upon completion of an alert process to the email address you specify. When setting up a New Alert, look for the field just below the Alert Description to enter an email address for delivery of the completion report.

Additional system enhancements include:

• Customizable reply-to email address for email alert responses
• Up to three phone numbers for a single contact record
• The addition of a  “last modified” date to lists
• Faster alert completion process with reduced message repeating and re-tries
• The “re-send” option allows you to send the same alert or a new message to successful deliveries, failed deliveries, or both
• Create new messages and contact lists on the fly during the alert creation process
• Self-Registrants can now use the same login credentials for multiple customer self-registration lists

As an added measure of security and assurance, Rapid Notify customer service can not make changes to user roles or reset passwords without prior authorization from the Primary Point of Contact for a customer account. As a reminder, those with the user role of Customer Administrator have the ability to manage user roles and passwords from their login accounts.

Look for more exciting enhancements in the future.  In the meantime, please let us know of any features or options that interest you.

Looking forward to 2012!

Steve Sipe

President, Rapid Notify, Inc.

Customer Spotlight: Washington County, Ohio

Washington County, Ohio has an approximate population of 62,000 in an area of 640 square miles. The Washington County Emergency Management Agency uses the Rapid Notify system to call out Police, Fire, EMS, and Industrial emergency response personnel. In addition, the system will be used for flood level call outs for the area, including the city of Marietta.

With the county bordered to the south and east by the Ohio River, residents are sometimes at risk of flooding. Earlier this spring, 21 Ohio counties were included in a federal disaster declaration as a result of severe storms.

Washington County recently completed installation of a flood warning system that includes three U.S. Geological Survey stream gauges installed in Duck Creek through Noble and Washington counties. The gauges collect data on rainfall, water level and stream flow, and transmit that information via satellite to the National Weather Service, which collects the data and makes it available to the public online.

“Local emergency management officials can directly monitor the gauges to keep tabs on water levels and warn residents of potential flood threats through a Rapid Notify call-down system, according to Jeff Lauer with the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.”

Washington County plans to implement the Rapid Notify online self-registration portal to allow area residents to opt-in and choose from multiple methods of communication. Residents will soon be able to sign up to receive emergency alert notifications via landline or cellular telephone, SMS text message, and e-mail. Alerts can be targeted to specific neighborhoods or communities in the event of a flash flood using Rapid Notify’s GIS Mapping capability.