One year ago, the Williams County Law Enforcement Center bought a $30,000 emergency notification system called City Watch to alert area citizens of confirmed emergencies.
City Watch is commonly known as a "reverse 911" system, said retiring Williams County Disaster Emergency Services Director Ed Lodwig.
Its mapping program allows officials to select any section in Williams County, retrieve phone numbers of people residing in those areas and call to inform them of an emergency. These calls are made by dispatchers at the Williston Police Department 911 center.
"It allows the 911 center to call the citizens and warn them of a danger, a lost child or a pending disaster coming," said Lodwig. People are called three times unless the call is answered by a person or an answering machine.
"We have every house and business in the county listed in the computer's network," said Michael Casler, Williams County Disaster Emergency Services appointed director.
When larger numbers of people need to be contacted at once, law enforcement officers can use City Net, a feature of City Watch, that is capable of contacting 200 people per minute.
City Net is typically employed during extreme scenarios and it costs 50 cents per line. This calling system, however, would be managed by contractors and not 911 center dispatchers.
"For instance, if we have a tornado coming in, we can identify the path of the tornado and every house in that area...and call everybody to tell them to take shelter," said Casler.
"We haven't used it for an emergency, but we test it every Wednesday to make sure it works," said Williston Police Chief Jim Lokken.
In non-emergency settings, City Watch is used to inform residents of local projects that may need the public's cooperation. For example, the Public Works recently began using City Watch to inform residents of snow removal schedules so people can move their vehicles from streets.
"It's kind of an emergency snow removal system," said Lokken. "We can contact whatever designated area they want us to contact."
Lokken added it takes dispatchers less than two hours to notify 200 people of the snow removal schedule. Last week, dispatchers contacted approximately 500 residents at one time.
"That works pretty well," said Williston city Director of Public Works and Engineering Monte Meiers on using City Watch for this type of public service announcement.
"When Monte brought this to us, we thought it was a good application," said Lodwig.
At the same time, Lokken believes dispatchers have benefited from using City Watch to remind the public of snow removal schedules.
"It gives our dispatchers experience in using it because if it is something you don't use all the time: 'Out of sight, out of mind' so to speak," added Lokken.
"We are testing the system in an non-emergency fashion, so we know the system is actually working, but it is not a critical thing," said Casler.
When an emergency does take place, law enforcement officials will be certain the system works properly, Casler said.
People contacted now should become more comfortable with City Watch, and during an emergency would know what the message means.
"It gives them a little bit of experience on the other end too," Lodwig said.
Using City Watch in non-emergency situations helps justify having the system at the Law Enforcement Center, said Lodwig. There is a $1,200 annual fee to have City Watch and it includes upgrades in the system.
Lodwig and Lokken said they had been looking to implement this program for a few years, but lack of competition among providers made the service too costly to buy, Lodwig said.
"In the last couple of years, the cost became affordable," Lodwig said.
Officials also saw the need to acquire an emergency notification system, as there is much oil activity in the area and major accidents would need to be shared quickly with the public.
"We thought it would just be another tool in communication," said Lodwig.
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