WEATHER
Mission: To provide coordination of elected offices and county departments in planning,
response and recovery to emergencies and disasters.
Summit County Emergency Operations Center during Exercise Mountain Move, 2007
SCALERT - Citizen text message notification system for Summit County
Community Exercise -
Current News Releases
On Monday November 16, 2009 between 1p-3p, the Summit County Communications Center (911 Dispatch) will be testing the Summit County Emergency Notification System called the Emergency Preparedness Network (EPN). While SCAlert, noted above on this page, is a text message notification system that sends text alerts to wireless devices registered by citizens, EPN sends voice notifications to landline/hardline phones based on the 911 database. No action is necessary by you to have your landline phone included in this system. This system is sometimes referred to as a reverse 911 system because the 911 Center’s role is reversed: Where normally the 911 Center receives emergency information from the citizenry, in the case of EPN, the 911 Center sends out emergency information to the citizenry.
There are some 42,000 landline phones within the borders of Summit County. Due to cost restraints, this testing will effect only a percentage of the total; some six to seven thousand. The purpose of the testing is to gather data concerning the landline phone network capacities within Summit County. The EPN system provides for a “call throttling rate”, which is the number of calls per minute that the system sends out. If the call throttling rate is set to high it will cause “network errors”, i.e. “We’re sorry all circuits are busy, please try your call again later.” If the call throttling rate is set to low, then there is available capacity not being utilized for the emergency notification. The data gathered in this testing will provide us with valuable insight toward optimal call throttling rates for future emergency notifications. The idea is to provide the emergency notification message to as many landline phones as quickly as possible without causing the counterproductive network errors/blockages.
Monday’s message will be: This is a test of the Summit County Emergency Notification System. If this were a true emergency you would be provided with pertinent information and instructions. Do not call 911 unless you have an emergency. This is just a test. Thank you. Goodbye.
There is no action required of citizens other than answering the phone, listening to the message, then hanging up. If no one is home and an answering machine picks up, the message will be left on the machine. If a TDD or TTY (Telecommunications devices for the deaf) picks up, the message will be transmitted to the device. It is extremely important that citizens not call 911 unless they have an emergency!