BENTONVILLE — Benton County’s emergency warning system could soon go live.
How soon depends on how quickly county officials can gather the mayors of Benton County’s cities and towns for a system briefing.
That meeting could be held in the next two weeks and the system activated immediately, County Administrator Chris Glass said Monday.
Glass issued a caution, however, adding that the county is dependent on the company it has contracted with and has little control or influence on the work unless a specific problem arises the county can assist in solving.
“As late as Friday afternoon, we were told that they hadn’t acquired the database,” Glass said. “We got on a conferencecall Friday with Cooper Industries and AT&T and with the miracles of modern communication we were able to make calls and send faxes and get signatures to satisfy AT&T that Cooper was supposed to have the database. They expect to have that Monday or Tuesday. We were told it’s just a matterof burning a disc for our use.”
The county is paying Cooper Industries $100,000 to set up the emergency notification system, which will allow weather warnings and other emergency messages to be sent directly to residents by way of an automated telephone message system, Glass said. Every telephone number in Benton County, including unlisted land lines, will be included in the warning system when it is activated, Glass said.
“It’s going to scare some people until they get used to it,” County Judge Dave Bisbee said. “It’s a warning system. It’s like hearing the sirens go off, but receiving a phone call is a lot more personal.”
Residents can opt out and choose not to receive messages, but Bisbee suggested everyone give the system some time before they make that choice.
Glass said he thinks opting out of the system would be a mistake for most people. He said the county will have a Web site that will allow residents to customize the service they receive, even to restricting the hours they may be sent messages. Staying with the system offers benefitsother than weather warnings for your home, Bisbee said.
“There are a lot of other potential uses,” Bisbee said. “If an Alzheimer’s patient is missing, we can send out an alert. Or if there’s a missing child, that type of message can be generated. Under this system, e-mails and text messages aren’t charged to the database so we can send out a lot of different messages.”
Wyman Morgan, Springdale’s director of administration and financial services, said that city has had a similar system up and running for several months and has found it quite useful.
“We were the first, we broke the ground for them on this,” Morgan said.
Morgan said Springdale looked at systems from companies across the country and choose the same system Benton County is buying because of the flexibility it offers.
“It can send messages to land lines, cells phones, pagers and even satellite radio,” he said.
Morgan said the city is already expanding the system beyond weather warnings, with the Springdale Fire Department having used it to alert a neighborhood of a practice burn the department was planning. He said messages can be targeted at areas as large as the entire city or as small as a single street. He said Springdale officials are considering using it to alert people aboutpublic hearings or rezonings that could concern them.
Someone living in Florida, for example, who had elderly parents in Springdale could have warningssent to them, Morgan said, allowing that person to check on their family in the event of an emergency.
Glass said the cost to the county for its system drops from $100,000 in the first year to $20,000 per year. The first year’s cost is being paid for through a grant. Glass said the county will ask cities to split the cost in subsequent years based on their share of the county’s population.
Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin said he’d have to see the system in operation before making any recommendation, but the potential seems to outweigh such a small cost.
“We do have a siren system in Bentonville,” McCaslin said. “This could be an added benefit for the citizens of Bentonville for a minimal number of dollars.”
While he had not yet been notified of a meeting or the specifics of the system, Gentry Mayor Wes Hogue said he thought the system was a good thing and expected the city would want to share in the use of the system.
“I think it’s a good thing, myself,” Hogue said, adding that the city had a siren system but that the sirens could not always be heard in all parts of the city.
Hogue said he himself would want to receive the notifications because of his role in ensuring public safety and thought the early warning system could be of benefit to all Gentry residents.
He said he would be taking the matter to the council as soon as he had all the information.
Randy Moll added to this article.
News, Pages 11 on 07/14/2010