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May 4

Written by:
5/4/2016 5:09 PM 

King County is investing in a new regional public emergency alert and notification system which features a public alert service - ALERT King County - to keep residents informed about significant events or emergency situations.

ALERT King County replaces RPIN (Regional Public Information & Notification) and uses the capable CodeRED software to drive the system.

The new software offers enhanced features that allow officials to more precisely target messaging geographically, based on home and/or business addresses provided by subscribers.

Soon we’ll be able to proactively send out a “boil water” alert if a water main breaks to just that area of the island, notify residents of one neighborhood of a chemical spill, or provide shelter locations and resource information following a disaster.

Details will evolve, but know that if you want to receive such notices all county residents are encouraged to sign up at www.KingCounty.gov/ALERTKingCounty to receive county – and local – alerts via telephone, text, and email. In the past these were pretty rare, and generally of high value, so I’d recommend signing up. It will also be possible to update your contact preferences in the future.

This system supplements all the other alerting systems, listed on VashonBePrepared's SignUp page. This will offer different capabilities than the excellent Voice Of Vashon Alert system, so sign up for both!

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In addition, the system features an internal notification service – KCInform – for contacting employee and community groups, such as VashonBePrepared volunteers.

We can selectively notify the EOC Team when the EOC is activating and ask when members of the team expect to arrive. CERT (Citizen Emergency Response Team) or our ACS (Auxiliary Communication Services) teams could use it to announce routine training sessions.

All of our volunteers have been entered into the new system and we anticipating trying it out in the coming weeks. If ready, it might even be used to notify VashonBeprepared volunteers during the upcoming Cascadia Rising Earthquake Exercise.

Details will evolve, but know that if you want to receive such notices you can already go to: www.KingCounty.gov/ALERTKingCounty to sign up for county – and local - alerts! In the past these were pretty rare, and generally of high value, so I’d recommend signing up. It will also be possible to update your contact preferences in the future.