CodeRED

County of Converse, to include the Town of Glenrock, Town of Lost Springs, Town of Rolling Hills, the City of Douglas, as well as all unincorporated areas of the county, through a contract with Emergency Communications Network, LLC, has been providing emergency alerts to citizens of Converse County through a "reverse 911" system called CodeRED, since 2008.

The system was purchased with, and the ongoing maintenance costs, are paid for with the E-911, or enhanced 911, funds that are overseen by the Converse County Joint Powers Board. This fund is originally billed to you by your home phone carrier (if you have a landline), as well as your cell phone provider. These fees are then passed on to the County.

It is important for everyone to understand a few things about this system.

If you have a home phone, or landline, that has a 358 or 436 prefix, you are automatically in the data base for the program. This data base is updated about every 6 months by the phone company. If you do not have a landline, and rely on cell phone service only, you need to register your phone number in the system in order to receive these calls. The online registration is simple and quick to do if you have an internet connection.

Other than the bi-yearly updates to the data base that the phone company does automatically, a citizen would need to update their own information if they move or change cell phone numbers.

This web-based system can be accessed by all 3 of the 911 centers in our county. All 3 of them can send alerts out at anytime. The system has the ability to allow the 911 communication specialist to either draw a square, a polygon, or click an incident point and draw a large circle, to map out the area that they want the system to notify. The system also has the ability for the communication centers to "pre-build" a call list, or fan out list. An example of this would be a pre built fan out list that the Douglas Police Department uses for a tornado watch. This list consists of businesses such as the Law Enforcement Academy, the swimming pool, elected officials, department heads, the State Fairgrounds, the senior housing administrators, the hospital, and the Douglas Care Center.

The CodeRED system has been used in the past to notify citizens of things like large natural gas leaks, hazard material spills, a barricaded gunman, as well as many others.

The system is also used for paging the Rural Fire Department as well as Search and Rescue personnel.

Registration

It does not matter which website you use to get to the registration page. After you register your cell phone, the system will automatically put you in the data base by the address you supply. You can also register to receive SMS messages to your phone by providing your phone number and mobile provider.

CodeRED also offers an app for your phone, download it now. The CodeRED Mobile Alert safety app delivers real-time emergency, community, missing person and severe weather alerts to users within the exact area of impact. Alerts are initiated by public safety officials who use the CodeRED community notification system to effectively alert and inform residents to save lives.

For more information, please contact your local law enforcement agency or emergency management. If anyone needs assistance registering because they don't have internet access, please feel free to contact the Emergency Management Agency.