Emergency alert system introduced
Hamilton County residents can now get alerts about emergencies sent straight to their phones.
A new mass notification system, on a platform called Regroup, can send calls and text messages to residents who sign up, based on their location in the county.
“So if you’re in Sale Creek and you’re not in danger, you won’t be woken up in the middle of the night,” Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp said during a news conference Tuesday. “But you will be, in the parts of the community where the risk is the greatest.” Residents can sign up at
hamiltonready.org, and enter their home or work address depending on where they’d like to receive alerts. As of Tuesday, around 1,300 people had already enrolled, according to Chris Adams, director of the Hamilton County Office of Emergency Management.
People who work in Hamilton County but live elsewhere can also sign up with their work address to get alerts there, office spokesperson Amy Maxwell said at Tuesday’s announcement.
Alerts will be sent from the county’s 911 center during crises, Adams said. Personal data will be protected and won’t be sold, just like any other data collected by the 911 center, he said.
“It’s only as good as the amount of people that sign up,” he said at the conference.
There’s been an uptick in crisis weather events in the county in recent years, Wamp said, including the tornadoes that tore through the area in April 2020.
Notifications can be sent for emergencies including fires, flooding, active shooters, missing or lost people, hazardous materials spills and severe
weather — some of which may be rolling through the area later this week.
Last year also saw an unprecedented number of hazmat spills in the area, including one that caused residents nearby to be evacuated for safety.
“We really didn’t have a system in place to handle that,” Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly said at Tuesday’s announcement. “But again, thanks to the hard work of the people standing behind me, we do now.”
Communication always comes up as the top area to improve after training exercises or large events, Chattanooga Fire Chief Phil Hyman said during the news conference.
“This Regroup is going to help do that,” Hyman said.
Authorities previously tried rolling out a mass notification system called Reverse 911 in the early 1990s, Adams said, but only about 2% of the county signed up.
“Outdoor sirens don’t work here, we’re not like middle Tennessee, flat,” Adams said. “We have topography of pretty high mountains and hills and valleys, so outside sirens don’t work … so that was out, and the cost of that was astronomical.”
The county has a one-year contract with Regroup, which can be renewed with approval each year, Adams said. The cost per year is $27,400, according to Maxwell.
The county looked at many mass notification platforms, Adams said. Others promised their notifications could be sent out to all of the county’s 370,000-plus residents in a matter of seconds, which Adams said is unrealistic and depends on cell towers in the area. Regroup was the only one that was honest about its abilities, he said.
“If you dump 360,000 messages on it, it’s going to clog up,” Adams said. “It’s like dumping 55 gallons in a funnel, it’s not going to come out.”