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Politics & Government

Village Officially Launches CodeRED

Prerecorded messages will be sent out in the event of emergencies.

After calling several thousand residents with a prerecorded message this morning, the Village of Skokie may have a costly phone bill. 

Well, not really. 

The village was testing out its new telephone emergency alert system, CodeRED. Villagers received a 57-second message on their landlines, cell phones and answer machines informing them of the new program earlier this morning.

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"CodeRED is an important tool for emergency communications," said Ann Tennes, director of marketing and communications for Skokie. "It will help us disseminate critical information."

In the event of situations such as boil water orders, hazardous chemical spills, security alerts, missing persons or evacuations, village officials will record a phone message and then send it out to all residents in the system.

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"The purpose of today's test was to determine how quickly our local infrastructure could deliver messages to the community, to test our database of numbers and remove problems from the database, such as disconnected numbers and operator intercept," said Skokie Fire Chief Ralph Czerwinski. "Our database contained 49,598 numbers and during today's test, 39,913 residents were contacted, which brings our active contact rate to about 75 percent, which is pretty good."

According to Czerwinski, the message was released to all database numbers within 44 minutes this morning, a vast improvement from the reverse 911 systems of the past.

"When we had a reverse 911 system previously, we used the phone lines that the village owned," Czerwinski said, adding that CodeRED messages are disseminated using a technology from Florida-based Emergency Communications Network, an organization the village used to prepare for the system's launch.

"Instead of our own phone lines, we are using the Emergency Communications Network's phone banks, which are highly capable and robust," he said. "Previously, if there was a crisis, it would take us 36 to 48 hours to contact everyone. Today it took minutes."

According to Tennes, CodeRED alerts will only go out in the event of a serious emergency.

"We will be very selective about using the system," she said. "We will not be deluging residents with phone calls. We will only use this in the case of a very serious emergency."

Why launch the program now?

"We wanted to do it on the first Tuesday of the month at 10 a.m. because that is the same time that other city's test their emergency systems," Tennes said. "We also wanted to publicize the test in the village newsletter, NewSkokie."

According to the village, residents can call back CodeRED at 866-419-5000 to hear a message repeated.

To register for CodeRED, visit www.skokie.org or call 847-982-5916

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