The City of Decatur just sent out an announcement saying that they’ve retired the Code Red emergency alert system in favor of enhanced services from Smart 911. Residents now must take action and opt-in to enhanced Smart 911 features in order to continue to receive emergency alerts from the city. More below…
This week, the City of Decatur transitioned to an enhanced Smart911 system to make communication between residents and public safety agencies easier and more convenient. In addition to providing details about their household to 9-1-1 dispatchers on emergency calls, Smart911 now gives users the option to opt-in to receive emergency and general notifications from the city. This Smart911 option replaces the CodeRed emergency and weather notifications. Since the City of Decatur is no longer using the CodeRed system, all CodeRed users who wish to continue to receive emergency alerts from the city should create a private and secure Safety Profile at www.Smart911.com. Anyone already registered with a Safety Profile at Smart911.com can simply log into their account to opt-in to the new enhanced features.
“The City of Decatur takes great pride in providing the best available resources to enhance safety in our community,” said Decatur Fire Chief Toni Washington. “By providing even more services through Smart911, we are making it easier for everyone in our community to manage all of their communication tools in one account.”
Members of the community can visit www.smart911.com to sign up and create a free Safety Profile for their household, providing information such as the names and photos of family members, health conditions, medications, pets in the home, vehicle details and emergency contacts. All profile information is voluntary and each household can determine what details are important to include. If a person already has an account, he or she can log in to update preferences and will be prompted to opt-in for emergency and general notifications.
I went to that site to have a look and two questions came to mind:
1. Is the data they are asking form us safe? It’s basically everything anyone would want to know about the individuals in a household – ready-made for hackers.
2. What happens to the data we provided to CodeRed? Is it to be deleted or what?
Casie Yoder at City Hall provided this reply to your questions:
“Smart911 is a secure, encrypted site and we will NEVER sell or share anyone’s information with a third party. Anyone registering for a Smart911 Safety Profile can provide as much or as little information as he or she likes – so if a person simply wants to receive emergency alerts and not fill out the rest of the data he or she can do just that. I will say that if you or anyone in your household has special medical needs it is strongly recommended that you note them in your Safety Profile so if an emergency responder arrives and someone can’t talk, etc. the dispatcher can relay the details in the profile. This has literally saved lives in other cities and states (great stories on the Smart911 blog about this).
The city did not renew its contract with CodeRed so it is my understanding that the account is closed and all the data phone numbers in that system will be deleted.
Having everything in one place (Smart911) should make it easier for residents to keep their information up-to-date and avoid confusion (when I started with the city I didn’t quite get the difference between Smart911 and CodeRed either).”