The City of Portland failed a test of its new citywide emergency alert system last month. A computerized system was supposed to alert more than 300,000 people, but managed to notify less than 1 percent of Portland citizens.
The test, which consisted of text, email and phone alerts, was only able to reach 2,100 people by 2 p.m. on Jan. 26, three hours after it had first been administered.
According to Randy Neves, the spokesman for the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management, the people the alert did manage to reach were all city employees with last names beginning with A, B and C, and whose contact information had been stored in citywide databases. All other names were not loaded into the system.
The vendor for the emergency alert systems, Louisiana-based First Call, has proven to be effective on smaller scale. In the year and a half it has been utilized in Portland, it has alerted neighborhoods of ammonia leaks on three separate occasions.
“Emergency officials hoped a citywide deployment would work,” Neves said in an article on OregonLive, but that they were “not counting on it and would use the emergency broadcast system for getting information out to mass numbers of people.”
In response to the system’s failure, city officials and Mayor Sam Adams are urging Portland residents to provide their names and contact information for emergency notifications through publicalerts.org.
Through various social media, the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management stated that it would never rely on one form of notification (thank God). But with the First Call system costing a hefty $80,000 per year, city officials are expecting it to work.
On its official website, First Call states, “It’s simple. It’s effective.” The breakdown of how the alert system works is simple as well. Users of First Call simply log in, select the notification recipients, create an alert or message and “save lives.” The system can be activated via a landline, a mobile device or a computer with Internet access.
In response to Portland’s obvious dissatisfaction with the failed emergency test, First Call President Matthew Teague had little to offer.
“The City of Portland’s notification system is a highly customized and powerful portal which has been built from scratch to meet the needs of the city,” Teague said. “With any new software, load testing under live conditions is necessary to reveal issues that internal or small-scale testing will miss, and the problems encountered today are currently being addressed.”
It is understandable that an alert attempting to reach such a large number of people would have its flaws, but less than 1 percent of the population? Those numbers are a bit disconcerting. One must remember that this was only the first test. The city has time to get it right, but what if something catastrophic happens?
Just over a year ago, a man attempted to detonate what he believed to be a bomb in Pioneer Square during the annual tree-lighting ceremony. Although this bomb threat was really an FBI sting, created in attempt to bring down a possible terrorist, the idea of something like that happening again is sobering.
The best ways for Portland residents to counter a large-scale emergency is to stay vigilant and take necessary precautions. As already stated, residents can register their names and contact information on publicalerts.org. This will make it easier for alerts to reach residents in the Portland area. Publicalerts.org sends out alerts on weather, transit and traffic delays, public-health alerts and other emergencies.
The site can be filtered by county or alert type, and it offers a discussion board for those wishing to share their opinions with the city and fellow residents. Also available are instructions on making a home emergency kit and contact information for other emergency agencies.
Just this month, PSU students living in the Broadway dorms were woken up around 2 in the morning after the fire alarms were triggered. A fire had started in the building’s garbage shoot, and just like the last Broadway fire, the emergency systems proved to work just fine.
Unlike October’s fire, the over-sensitive sprinklers were not triggered and no student property was damaged. (Although one might argue that being woken up at 2 in the morning on a school night is damaging to the academic success of college students.) That is not the fault of the school.
PSU’s alert system works, which is great. Greater Portland still has some kinks to work out of their system. The Bureau of Emergency Management is working hard to make sure we stay alerted and safe. We, as Portland residents, should meet them halfway by registering with PublicAlert and staying vigilant.
Portland is hard at work to make sure its residents stay safe, so let’s do our part to keep ourselves and our city safe.