CodeRED emergency alert drill reaches fewer people than 2018

Washakie County Emergency Management conducted a test of the CodeRED emergency alert system on Monday, June 10. In contrast to its previous drill, conducted in 2018, which reached 88% of eligible Washakie County mobile phones and landline phones, the test conducted June 10 reached only 37% of these numbers.

Although the alert system in this year's drill made 5,371 phone calls, it reached a total of only 2,013 Washakie County residents who had registered with the CodeRED system. Voice calls were either answered by a person or sent to an answering device. The system also sent 374 text messages and seven telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) messages, as well as 105 emails.

Washakie County Emergency Management Director Kami Neighbors said she was not really surprised by the sharp drop in the connection rate. She attributed the drop to likely differences in landline prevalence and noted that back in 2018, many more people had landlines in their homes. Many people now have only mobile phones, but their former landline numbers may still be in the CodeRED system. Some of these numbers may even date from the system's initial introduction in 2010.

Neighbors is working on a solution to this old number problem. "I have asked OnSolve, the company that owns CodeRED, to do what they call 'varidata,' where they can go in and check the numbers that weren't answered, to see if a phone line is no longer in use," she explained. OnSolve can then remove these defunct numbers from the system. Neighbors expects this process to take a couple of weeks.

"The system has been in use for quite some time, and those landlines just need to be cleaned up," Neighbors said.

These are some differences between the numbers called in 2018 and those called in 2024. In addition to phone numbers of registered CodeRED users, the 2018 test called numbers kept in a community database maintained by OnSolve. The drill this year attempted to call only registered CodeRED users.

Neighbors expects a better connection rate the next time around. "We'll probably do this test call again next year and should have a more accurate number of contacts in the system at that time," she said.

She also noted lessons learned from the 2024 CodeRED drill. "On our end, we learned that it takes several minutes from the time we hit 'launch message' to the time the public receives the call," Neighbors said. "Again, cleaning up the numbers in the system should speed up that process, as the system won't be trying to make what's most likely a couple thousand phone calls unnecessarily."

Neighbors encourages people to sign up for CodeRED, if they haven't done so already. User information will remain confidential, and people will not receive spam calls, spam texts or other irrelevant messages. Depending on selections made during registration, CodeRED users can receive many kinds of emergency alerts by voice call or text, including for severe weather, flash flooding, wildfire, missing persons and other types of emergency and non-emergency alerts. The CodeRED system can also be configured to send alerts for specific areas of Washakie County, instead of county-wide alerts.

In addition, CodeRED users traveling in another county can receive that county's CodeRED alerts, if the other county participates in the CodeRED alert system.

Neighbors pointed out that as of last year, CodeRED provides an option to receive messages in Spanish. Registered users who currently receive messages in English, but who wish to receive them in Spanish, can log in to the system and choose the Spanish language option.

To register, Washakie County residents with mobile phones can download the CodeRED app at onsolve.com/crmobile. They could also text "WASHAKIE" to 99411. Neighbors said that anyone who wishes to participate in the CodeRED system but needs assistance in doing so should call her office at 347-3331.