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.

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We just received our Code Red Alert on this.

According to the nameless female voice in the recorded message, a water main break occurred today at the intersection of East College Avenue and East Trinity Place in Decatur.

Some residents have reported low water pressure or complete disruption of service as a result of the break.  DeKalb County is working to restore water service in the next 12 hours.

However – and here’s the kicker – that intersection will remain closed for AT LEAST the next 5 days as repairs are made.  According to the message, a detour route has been established, but man is that gonna create a mess for traffic in that area over the next week.

There is no “boil water” alert at this time.

Quite a night.

Between the dog freaking-out, a river in the basement, late-night calls from Code Red, and some pretty savage lightning, I’m just a bit groggy this morning.

And what was with that siren?  Altmod echos my confusion…

Do the sirens go off for “flash flood” as well because that was the only active alert in effect while the sirens were going off. When I hear the sirens I always freak out thinking tornado.

Assuming this was Agnes Scott’s siren, perhaps they would be willing to clarify.

UPDATE: NTDecatur tweeted this in the midst of the chaos last night:

The ASC siren is for a severe thunderstorm warning. Please RT.

UPDATE II: Follow the flood story on Twitter here.

As I’m sure many of you are aware, the City of Decatur used its “Code Red” notification system this morning to announce that the reason water pressure was low or non-existent this morning was due to a “power outage at a pumping station”.

But here’s the thing…by the time we got the message, full water pressure had been restored.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like this notification system but perhaps in a non-emergency situation they could call it something other than “Code Red”. I still get that initial lump in my stomach when I see that phone number with so many 9s and 1s and hear the words “code red”.

UPDATE: 11Alive has details about why the water outage occurred.