P.A. fire dept. seeks to join SaskAlert system

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“So then people would need to be listening to the radio or watching T.V. in order to get that message, but the nice thing about it is that it will potentially reach out to visitors to the city; people that are passing through up to the lakes that would not be signed up to the P.A. Alert system.”

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The executive committee forwarded the recommendation on to council to approve June 15.

From there the City will have to make an application to the province have personnel trained on how to generate those alerts.

“There was no question on it. They felt it was a good partnership essentially so when it comes to public safety the more ways we can get that message out to people in our community the better off everybody is going to be,” he said.

If council passes the proposal, SaskAlert won’t come into effect until the fall and Everitt said in the meantime the fire department will contact media partners in case of an emergency.

Currently, participation in SaskAlert is voluntary.

P.A. Alert test

As for the P.A. Alert system, Everitt said it was tested on Saturday morning through a city-wide phone call to each contact.

Everitt said there are around 12,000 contacts in the system.  Out of those 12,000 contacts, 1,425 registered online with ways in which they wish to be contacted.

“We do have the ability to leave a voicemail or a recording at each of those contacts but we didn’t do it this time just because it would have really slowed the whole system down,” he said, adding in an actual event they would have left a message.

By the end of the test, more than 2,000 people confirmed they received the test, which he said they expected.

“Where we ran into some challenges were people in the outlying areas outside of the city that created an account in P.A. Alert which was great, but they didn’t either list any addresses within the city, so therefore they didn’t get an alert,” he said.

Overall, they considered the test a success.

Everitt said next they are going to continue to promote P.A. Alert and ask members of the public to create an account, so they can control how they receive the message.

news@panow.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow