Our guest this week was Northfield Deputy Police Chief Chuck Walerius, talking about the new CodeRed emergency notification system for Rice and Steele counties (brochure/FAQ PDF) and the test of the system coming up on April 15.
You can sign up now so that the system alerts you via landline phone, cell phone, text message and email. Just visit either the City of Northfield Police Dept. page or the Emergency info page and click on the CodeRed logo/link. You’ll be sent to a special Rice/Steele page on the CodeRed.com website. (I’m deliberately not linking to it from here in case the URL changes.)
Click play to listen. 30 minutes.
You can also download the MP3 or subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes. Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Mondays at 6:00 PM and Sundays at 10 AM on KYMN 1080 AM.
I whined about the lack of information about CodeRed in a blog post last December (Keeping CodeRED a secret: two months and counting) so it was nice to be contacted by Deputy Chief Walerius about this April 15 test.
Also, at the end of the show, Tracy and I pointed out to him that the CodeRed brochure/PDF was not yet on the Police Dept.’s web page. It now is.
Kudos for responsiveness!
Nfld News editorial Dec 11, 2009: CodeRED should add weather alerts
Also, when the power goes out in a storm, the old phone still works. You cannot have too much communication in an urgent situation.
I think it should be used for tornadoes, but not for every severe thunderstorm warning… potential loss of life needs to be involved.
John,
Walerius indicated that the ‘weather’ module for CodeRed would be an additional expense, though he didn’t say how much.
I think Northfield’s portion of the cost to buy CodeRed amounted to $3000 last year. I assume that was a one-time expense.
Hmmm… Do you think they’ve noticed that their department link on the PDF is incorrect? They’ve got http://www.northfield.mn.us and it’s supposed to be http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us Perhaps one of you who knows them could give the heads-up?? Just a thought! : )
Thanks, Anne. I’ll alert Deputy Chief Walerius.
Thanks Griff and Anne! Actually, people can just click on the CodeRED logo on the website and it will take them to the registration page. They do not have to go through the brochure; however if they do, it has now been fixed. Thanks again for letting us know.
Chuck
Chuck, I think you’ve misunderstood Anne and me. The URL in the PDF brochure A) isn’t clickable and B) doesn’t point people to the CodeRed registration page. It rightfully points them to the Police Dept page and it was THAT URL that was incorrect.
So our concern was that if you had that brochure printed, people would be typing in the incorrect URL to get to the police dept page.
I see the new PDF is up. But tell the city webmaster that it’s not helpful to create a new file with a new name because now it forces everyone who’s already linked to the old URL (like me!) to go back an edit our post and link to the URL. Much better if they’d replaced the old PDF with the new PDF, same file name/same URL.
Both of these are still lit:
http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/assets/c/Code-Red.pdf
http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/assets/c/CodeRed.pdf
Two weeks till CodeRed d-day: have y’all signed up?
Chuck,
I see in last week’s Friday Memo that City Administrator Joel Walinksi wrote:
Did something change or is Joel mistaken about weather alerts?
Tomorrow is CodeRed test day, tornado drill day at the schools, and tax day.
I just got my Code Red notice via email. No sign of phone or SMS notice as yet.
I do wish it wasn’t SHOUTING AT ME.
Mine just came over my cell phone as a pre-recorded message. No SMS as of yet.
I received voicemail on my cell phone, but it didn’t leave one on my home phone -- just keeps calling back. No SMS for me yet either…
Why are they using AOL?
I got all three: email, text message, and voicemail.
How did they manage to exceed the 160 character limit for a SMS/text message? That text is over 1500 characters.