Municipal Phone-Alert Systems Augment County’s

COURT HOUSE – With the almost unceasing news of catastrophic disasters, hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding among them, residents at various municipal government meetings are inquiring about how they are to stay best informed in such an event.
During public comments at those meetings, some residents have asked for an alert siren signaling flooding and to urgently move cars out of the way of harm. Other residents have noted that existing automated phone alert systems do not always work as well as they should with town name confusion sending an emergency rescue squad to the wrong location, for example.
There is universal consensus that the automated phone alert system is a valuable tool which, along with other forms of media, allows municipalities and the county to quickly and accurately inform as many people as possible of emergency information.
The key that all officials emphasize is that residents, and even short-term visitors and campground denizens, must register to receive notifications for the system to work.
Sea Isle City’s System
Sea Isle City Business Manager, George Savastano, explained his municipality’s system, “the city’s Reverse 911 system informs residents who sign up of important events and emergency information by placing phone calls with a recorded message to the number registered with us. Residents can register by going to our website home page and clicking on the link in the upper right-hand corner ‘Register for City News and Alerts’).
“The alert allows us to contact thousands of people within minutes. The system we use is our own system. The vendor is Emergency Communications Network, LLC; and the budget for this is $4,000.”
Dennis Township Considers System
At its work session before its regular meeting Oct. 11, Dennis Township Committee heard a presentation from a representative of Swift Reach Networks on an automated phone alert system. The representative explained that her company’s system serves about 6,200 households throughout te state and provides service 24/7 at the cost of $3,400 annually with unlimited data.
Mayor Zeth Matalucci noted, “This sounds great, although of course price will always be a consideration and also we need to think about how to make sure residents sign up for the announcements.
“I don’t think people want to hear about bake sales through this system so we’d need to figure out which announcements are appropriate for this system.”
Upper Township System
Upper Township Administrator Scott Morgan, who has also served as the deputy director of Cape May County Emergency Management said, “I started the process for the program with Martin Pagliughi, the current director of the county (Office of) Emergency Management. The county Code Red program and municipal systems are two individually independent systems.
Upper shares a Reverse 911 system with Ocean City and we welcome other neighboring municipalities who might want to cost-share this system by participating.”
Morgan summed up the advantages of these various emergency-alert options by noting, “As the former deputy coordinator of Ocean City Emergency Management during Hurricane Sandy and now the emergency coordinator of Upper Township as of 2014; I have used this alert/ warning system on several occasions over the past 10 to 15 years. 
“We’ve announced shelter-in-place advisories during police incidents such as bank robberies, flooding situations, hurricanes, earthquakes, nor’easters, missing persons investigations, along with internal advisories to our municipal employees for late openings, early dismissals and it is often utilized for our CERT (community emergency response team) team when they are needed for many volunteer emergency management activities for both Ocean City and Upper Township.”