White Co. to test phone notification system

CLEVELAND - As White Countians deal with the affects of a winter weather event with downed trees, power outages and possible road hazards, the White County Emergency Management Agency is working to put in place a new county wide emergency phone notification system.

White County Emergency Management Agency Director David Murphy said, this new system is in addition to existing services. He said, "it is a well rounded notification system for our residents, we can utilize it for weather, we can utilize it for hazardous materials events where we have to do evacuations, dam failures, flooding, escape prisoners, crime alerts and things like that, that really needs to get out to the public."

Murphy says this new system has the capability to call all landline telephones in the county at one time. The EMA office will be testing the system on Monday between 6 and 7 PM. Murphy says, "When we do the test call to all the residences they will have the option to opt out of the system if they don't want to be a part of it, if they choose to do that we will follow up with a phone call to explain the system to them and see if that is really what they want to do."

According to Murphy a couple of hundred people have already called their office at 706-865-0911 and added their mobile phone to the list for receiving the notices.

This new system has been paid for by a federal grant and Murphy says they will continue to work and refine the operation and explore new avenues of service that it can provides.