Podcast: Deputy Police Chief Chuck Walerius on the April 15 CodeRed test (sign up now)

Nfld News editorial Dec 11, 2009: CodeRED should add weather alerts

But police officials believe severe weather warnings are best handled by other, more qualified agencies and that warnings are covered by existing resources. We disagree. Anyone who has seen a patrol car weaving its way through neighborhoods with its lights and siren going to warn people to take cover in advance of a tornado knows police are often on the front line of a severe weather event.

And while the outdoor sirens are effective as long as you are outdoors, not everyone has a weather radio or the TV turned on to know when bad weather is approaching. But everyone has a phone and pays attention when it rings.

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.

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

Chuck,

I see in last week’s Friday Memo that City Administrator Joel Walinksi wrote:

As we move into the summer storm season this program is another communication piece for officials to provide timely updates to citizens.

Did something change or is Joel mistaken about weather alerts?

Why are they using AOL?

from riceandsteele911@aol.com
date Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 10:00 AM
subject Alert message

4/15/2010 11:00:18 AM – •       THE PUBLIC SAFETY AGENCIES FROM WITHIN RICE AND STEELE COUNTY ARE EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE THE ACQUISITION OF A PUBLIC SAFETY SYSTEM WHICH WILL NOTIFY YOU OF EMERGENCY INCIDENTS THAT MAY INVOLVE THE SAFETY OF YOUR FAMILY AND NEIGHBORHOOD, SUCH AS A MISSING CHILD, HAZARDOUS MATERIAL SPILLS, OR FLOODING, JUST TO NAME A FEW.
•       THE SYSTEM IS CAPABLE OF NOTIFYING YOUR HOME PHONE, MOBILE PHONE OR EMAIL ADDRESS OF ANY INCIDENTS OCCURING IN THE AREA OF YOUR RESIDENCE THAT COULD AFFECT YOUR SAFETY.
•       TO ENSURE THAT WE HAVE ALL OF YOUR CORRECT NOTIFICATION INFORMATION, YOU CAN GO TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT WEB SIGHT FOR YOUR COUNTY OR COMMUNITY AND SIGN UP FOR THIS SERVICE.
•       THE SYSTEM ALLOWS US TO QUICKLY NOTIFY NUMEROUS RESIDENCES SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH PUBLIC SAFETY INFORMATION.
•       WE ARE CONTACTING ALL PHONE NUMBERS KNOWN TO US WITHIN THE TWO COUNTIES TO NOTIFY THEM OF THE SERVICE.
•       TO SIGN UP, PLEASE VISIT YOUR COUNTY OR LOCAL COMMUNITIES INTERNET WEB SITE AND CLICK ON CODE RED TO SIGN UP FOR THE SERVICE.
•       WE ASK THAT YOU TALK WITH ALL OF YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS AND NEIGHBORS TO ENSURE THAT THEY RECEIVED THIS MESSAGE AND ARE AWARE OF THE SERVICE.
•       WE ALSO ASK THAT IF YOU ARE AWARE THAT SOMEONE YOU KNOW DOES NOT HAVE INTERNET ACCESS, YOU MIGHT OFFER TO ASSIST THEM IN SIGNING UP FOR THE SERVICE SO THAT IN TIMES OF NEIGHBORHOOD EMERGENCIES EVERYONE GETS THE NOTIFICATION.
•       AGAIN, FURTHER INFORMATION CAN BE OBTAINED BY VISITING YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT WEB SITE AND CLICKING ON CODE RED.  THANK YOU.