Vt. Dept. of Emergency Management says it is abandoning plan to s...
Vt. Dept. of Emergency Management says it is abandoning plan to set up statewide reverse 911 system that would link addresses to phone numbers to automatically place calls to households and businesses in danger during emergencies and give recorded…
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warnings and instructions. Emergency Management Dir. Edward von Turkovich told legislative oversight committee supervising project that too many technical obstacles existed to make system work on wide scale. He said his agency instead would work to improve existing methods for warning public of emergency alerts, such as by radio and TV broadcasts. Von Turkovich said small-scale versions of reverse 911 existed in state, such as systems in place around state’s prisons to warn neighbors if prisoners escaped. He said such systems worked within small geographic area and with limited types of emergencies, but attempts to scale up such systems to cover wide areas and wide range of emergencies all failed to meet tests of reliability, economy and ease of use. He said state hadn’t given up on idea, but would wait until technology further matured before pursuing it.