Spokane County’s ALERT Spokane emergency communications system is making a comeback.
Chandra Fox, the deputy director of the county’s emergency management department, says the system was driven offline in November when the company that previously operated the system, CodeRED, experienced a debilitating ransomware attack.
“It was several weeks before they actually came out and said we were the victims of a cyberattack and the system is just no longer available,” she said.
Fox says the county has been working with a new firm, Regroup Mass Notification, to recreate the system. During the interim, Fox says Spokane County turned to the state’s emergency management office.
“We had several missing vulnerable people that we sent out messages for. We had a couple of law enforcement activity, shelter-in-place-type things as well. So we relied on the state system and that did the messaging function for us,” Fox said.
Fox says the new version of ALERT Spokane includes new, more accurate maps and information. She says it’s a more localized version of other emergency apps such as Watch Duty.
“Watch Duty is not going to help you in a winter storm and it's not going to help you if there's police activity down the block and the police want you to stay in your home. So, if folks really want to be aware and tied into the messaging, this is the way to do it,” she said.
People who subscribed to the previous version of ALERT Spokane will need to re-register. They can do that at ALERTSpokane.org or the county emergency management website.
“They can select how they want to receive the message, so they can select, you know, email, text message, voice call. They can do one or any combination of the three,” Fox said.
She hopes to increase the participation in the emergency alert system. She says only 15% of county residents were registered before it went down last fall.
Fox says the county has signed a three-year contract with Regroup. It will pay $62,500 this year, and about $61,500 for the two years after that. That compares with a $51,000 annual payment with CodeRED.
