By Akeem Mellis
Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi introduced an emergency notification system earlier this month designed to contact thousands of residents within minutes and inform them in the case of an emergency. “We’ll be able to notify everyone in Nassau County if we wanted to within a five-hour period. We’ll be able to notify everyone with the perceived hurricane flood zone which would be with a Category 4 hurricane within a two-hour period, and we can notify people throughout Nassau County within minutes by the pressing of a button, and utilizing the technology we now have available to us.”
Suozzi said the county will spend $168,000 in the first year to implement the program, and then $125,000 in subsequent years to maintain it. The funds will be drawn from Homeland Security grants given to Nassau County. In response to concerns about the program’s compatibility with community members’ cell phones, James Callahan, commissioner of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), said through the New York State program “New York Alerts,” the county will be able to “reverse-burst” a signal out of cell phone towers. “Your cell phone is constantly checking the towers that it’s on. If you call 911 and you can’t answer, they’ll know where you are,” said Callahan. “So through the state, we’ll be able to reverse-burst that out of a cell phone tower … every phone that’s getting that tower will get a call message stating the exact same [message].”
The county submitted a request for proposals and began the bidding for the contract early last month. Between 10 and 15 companies submitted a bid for the contract. After a selection committee evaluated the bids, Swiftreach Networks, a New Jersey-based company, was chosen.
The University also uses the same company for its emergency contact system. “If it was ever necessary, the University would coordinate with Nassau County regarding emergency alerts,” said Melissa Connolly, vice president of University Relations, Greg Caronia, deputy commissioner for the OEM, further outlined the additional features of the new system. “The telephone notification system also includes e-mail, text messaging, TDD and TTY (for the hearing impaired), an enhanced 911 system and a consumer telephone system,” Caronia said. In a demonstration of how the system functions, the cell phones of everyone in attendance at the press conference rang, automatically set to receive emergency messages from the emergency services program. Nassau County is the first in the tri-state area to implement such a program for emergency calls. “Everyone will wind up doing this sooner or later,” said Suozzi.
Residents of Nassau county will receive notification of an emergency via a burst from a local cell tower using the notification system.. (www.gmu.edu)