As Hurricane Laura leaves hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana without water and power, we wonder about our own vulnerabilities on the Eastern Shore.
We’ve been through it before. Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and Sandy in 2012 pummeled and flooded the Shore and both those storms occurred in September and October, the most active part of hurricane season. This year is particularly active.
But we are not totally defenseless. Sophisticated weather mapping and forecasting systems like the National Weather Service coordinate with emergency services nationwide and for or us, the Kent County Emergency Services provide those life-saving warnings and updates regardless of loss of power (and your cell-phone is on).
The Spy talked recently with Ginger Gregg, Emergency Planner for Kent County Emergency Services, about how KCES worked to help us stay informed of any impending danger from hurricane to fire and even terrorist-level events through their CodeRed alert system.
The CodeRED feature, is am enrollment based national mass emergency notification system that can alert thousands of people within minutes using geo-targeted, time-sensitive information via phone, email, SMS. Using your location data, it pinpoints and accesses threats to your area.
A CodeRED app must be downloaded to your phone for this to be available and requires users to choose the types of warnings they want to receive. To sign up for this life saving notification system, go here.
Gregg also warns that during this hurricane season. and because of COVID, Kent County will not offer the Community Center as a shelter and that each individual must be prepared to “go it alone.”
We’ve been warned. To help you plan, see www.ready.gov.
A CodeRED app must be downloaded to your phone for this to be available and requires users to choose the types of warnings they want to receive. To sign up for this life-saving notification system, go here.
This video is approximately seven minutes long. If you have further questions about any of KCES, Ginger Gregg is available via email at [email protected].
MQ Fallaw says
I signed up (on my desktop) to get CodeRed notifications several years ago—by landline, 2 email addresses, and cell phone—all at the same time on the same website. There was no app to be downloaded onto my cell phone, which likely wouldn’t have been possible anyway because it’s a quite old flip-phone, but I have gotten this summer’s notifications just fine on that phone as well as the other ways.
james dissette says
Thank you. Clarifying this in the article.
The easiest way is to go directly to their website: https://www.kentcounty.com/oes