In the event of a major emergency, the city has a new tool to spread the word to Londoners.
The Alert London emergency notification system was launched Monday as part of the kickoff to Emergency Preparedness Week. Residents can sign up to get notifications sent to them by phone, text message, or email to let them know when a potentially life threatening incident is happening within the city.
"It could be related to a chemical spill or a hazardous material event. It could be related to a significant fire or flood. It could be an event where there is risk associated to a threat of some sort. Anything we think has a significant impact on human life in the city is when we will use this new alert system," said Dave O'Brien, manager of Emergency Management for the city. "We won't be using it for small events. We want to be very careful that when we send an alert out that people understand it's a very, very serious situation. We need them to listen to what we are talking about and respond to the message appropriately."
City staff would use geo-mapping technology to pinpoint the location of a large-scale emergency when it's in progress and then activate Alert London to notify residents and businesses in close proximity.
It's taken the city roughly three years to set-up the new emergency notification system, which is capable of sending 4-million notifications in an hour.
"Technology changes quite rapidly, so the early renditions of this program did not have near the capability of this current software package," said O'Brien. "I'm sure as time goes on there will be some additional renditions of this. You want to make sure you have a product that's going to be as easy to use as possible to use but still accomplish and has the capability you want it to have to ensure you're reaching a broad sector of the community."
Demonstrating how easy it is to begin receiving notifications from Alert London, Mayor Matt Brown signed up for the service during a brief news conference at the Emergency Operations Centre on Boler Rd.
"It just took a couple of minutes. It's so worth doing," said Brown. "When there is an emergency situation we need to be able to get in touch with our citizens as quickly as possible. We rely so heavily on our media partners, radio, tv, newspaper but we also need to get directly to people through their cellphones and this allows us to do that."
Notifications will be tailored for each situation and could include instructions to evacuate or to remain in-doors.
For more information or to register for Alert London go to London.ca/AlertLondon.
