Rocky View County (RVC) residents will soon see information packets arriving at their residences, inviting them to sign up for a new communications system called Safe & Sound. With social media providing thousands of venues for people to spread misinformation, the new system will hopefully provide the County with a more efficient and effective way to communicate with residents, according to RVC.
“There are all kinds of emergencies that could impact RVC – train accidents, wildfires, toxic chemical spills, severe weather – that the municipality needs to prepare for,” said RVC’s Manager of Communications Grant Kaiser. “You can protect houses and you can protect infrastructure, but none of it matters unless you also protect life.”
According to Kaiser, the system is based off a system the County’s emergency services teams are already using, but will provide both emergency notifications and County updates – offering municipal transparency and reliable information to residents throughout RVC.
When they receive the sign up packets in the mail, Kaiser said residents are encouraged to follow the guide to provide the County with accurate contact information – and rank this information in order of preference.
“The system will also ask individuals to pinpoint their municipal address, but also other important locations – where you work, your child’s daycare, or maybe your grandma’s house because she might need help in case of an emergency,” Kaiser said. “And we will occasionally send updates to keep that information current, because that way we are ready to go if we need to use it.”
In the case of an emergency, first responders on the field will determine what information needs to be communicated to the public – what’s going on, where it’s happening, what people need to do, and how they need to do it. Then, Kaiser said, the system will locate all the registered users in the area, and begin to contact them using their preferred method.
“If they don’t confirm that they’ve received the message, we will keep moving through the list until we get that confirmation or until the message is no longer valid,” he said. “But it also helps with management for emergencies too.”
When residents sign up for the service, Kaiser said they will have the opportunity to provide information about themselves that could be relevant in case of an emergency – if they use life-sustaining equipment, if they have mobility impairments, or if they run a daycare out of their home, for example.
“Then, through the system’s polling function, our responders have an idea of what to expect on the scene,” said Kaiser. “The system will have you press one if you’ve evacuated, two if you are at a shelter, and so on, so that we will know who is safe and who still needs to be accounted for.”
The system will also provide communication about issues that are important to RVC residents, but that aren’t emergency situations. In such a large and lightly populated county, Kaiser said it can be challenging for administration to provide the right information to the right residents.
“This will give people the option of signing up to receive updates in additional topic categories, like fire bans, county updates, recreation services, that sort of thing,” he said. “That way, we can easily let you know if your waste and recycling centre is changing hours for the holidays, or if there is a road closure, or even an open house on an important issue. We can send information to people about what matters to them in a fast, targeted manner.”
Signup packets should be arriving at RVC residences within the next couple of weeks, and Kaiser said they hope the system will be launched by the last week of May.
