Few Kansas counties use federal program to issue emergency alerts

When wildfires swept through the wine country of California last month, only one of the hardest-hit counties was spared death.

It was also the only county to activate the government’s most comprehensive public notification system in the event of emergencies, authorities have said.

Fewer than 20 percent of the counties in Kansas utilize that system — known as the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, or IPAWS.

Three of those counties, however, are in the Wichita metropolitan area: Sedgwick, Kingman and Reno.

IPAWS sends emergency information to television and radio stations, cell phones, internet service providers, weather radios and other platforms from a single launch point. The alerts can be sent to specified geographic areas, much like weather warnings are now designated for only those locations directly in the path of a storm.

‘I can’t fault them for that’

The state of Kansas leaves it up to individual counties to determine which notification service to employ when sending emergency alerts out to the public.

“Some counties have just said ‘It’s not something that we’re going to invest in when we have another system that we utilize that we feel works for us,” Jonathan York, response and recovery branch director for the Kansas Division of Emergency Management, said of IPAWS. “I can’t fault them for that.

“There’s no county that doesn’t have a mechanism identified for how they’re going to alert their public in Kansas,” he said.

Residents should check to see what service is available where they live and what it takes to sign up, York and other officials said.

One of the biggest advantages of IPAWS is the alerts are sent automatically to an array of platforms, said Cody Charvat, interim director of Sedgwick County Emergency Management.

While users of other notification systems typically have to opt in to receive alerts to mobile platforms, people have to disengage alerts from IPAWS.

“IPAWS is kind of the clearing house, the central gathering point” for the various emergency alerts that can be sent, Charvat said.

Severe weather alerts issued by the National Weather Service are the most common use of IPAWS, Charvat said. Alerts sent by the weather service to cell phones of residents in Eureka are credited with saving numerous lives when a tornado struck the town after sunset in July 2016.

Numerous uses

Amber Alerts issued by the KBI are another use familiar to residents. But it can also be used to warn the public about a number of other events:

▪ Civil emergency messages

▪ Civil danger warnings

▪ Earthquake warnings

▪ Immediate evacuations

▪ Fire warnings

▪ Hazardous materials warnings

▪ Law enforcement warnings

▪ Local area emergencies

▪ Shelter in place warnings

Since being certified to use IPAWS about two years ago, Sedgwick County has yet to use it for a critical situation, Charvat said. But “several times we got close.”

The most recent was last Wednesday morning, when Charvat received a page notifying him of a possible active shooter at the Goodwill campus in northeast Wichita.

Charvat and other staff monitored police radios and the department’s police computer to learn more. He then posted what was known on the department’s e-log, which is available to the public at www.scksel.info, “so if folks saw an increased police presence, they would know what was happening,” he said.

Charvat then began writing an alert that would be sent to all cell phones near the Goodwill camps on North Webb. The alert would also be sent to anyone within — or driving into — the designated area.

But Charvat never sent the alert because investigators quickly determined there was no shooter and no actual threat.

“I didn’t want people to panic unnecessarily” by sending out the alert without more information, he said.

A recent close call

Software and equipment for IPAWS cost Sedgwick County about $17,000 to acquire and set up, Charvat said, but there are no ongoing fees. Government officials or first-responder authorities can request alerts be sent out, he said, though the language must be validated and meet the standards laid out in the county’s plan.

IPAWS has been used locally to notify residents that the Emergency Accident Reporting Plan was in effect, Charvat said.

“If something like a wildfire broke out here, we would absolutely activate the whole gamut here,” he said.

Another recent close call was when someone reportedly made threats against a judge at the Sedgwick County Courthouse, Charvat said. Emergency management staff were poised to send out a warning “just in case we had to alert everybody in the downtown area to avoid the courthouse,” he said.

When they turned to the police frequency handling the downtown situation, they learned the suspect was being taken into custody “so there was no need to send a message,” he said.

Counties that do not use IPAWS have numerous notification systems to choose from, officials said. Nixle has the largest market share, Greenwood County Emergency Management director Levi Vinson said.

What other counties use

Butler County uses Reverse 911, which sends alerts to land-line phones in a designated geographic area. But that service can’t notify cell phones, which is why officials are in the process of becoming certified to use IPAWS.

“Our biggest fear is getting people on cell phones,” Butler County Emergency Management Director Jim Schmidt said.

When a grass fire broke out southwest of El Dorado last month and began spreading quickly on a blustery day, Schmidt said, officials sent evacuation alerts to 15 houses threatened by the flames via Reverse 911, and then began going door to door.

But that won’t always be an option, Schmidt said.

“We’re working...to bring Butler County on board” with IPAWS, “but we’re not there yet,” he said.

Harper County uses Nixle, which provides information ranging from emergency alerts to advisories to traffic reports to residents who have registered to receive them.

Cowley County has completed the steps to be certified to use IPAWS, but it’s awaiting formal approval from FEMA, emergency management director Brian Stone said.

Until the IPAWS approval arrives, the county is using Everbridge, a system that automatically sends emergency alerts via land lines and also sends them to cell phones or computers for customers who have signed up for the service.

“It has to be deemed an emergency,” Stone said.

Looking at options

Neither Sumner nor Harvey counties use public notification systems.

“We’re looking at options right now,” Harvey County Emergency Management director Gary Denny said. “We’re in the midst of trying to find out what’s out there on the market that will fit our needs.”

In the meantime, he said, the county would rely on social media and outdoor warning sirens to alert residents.

In Sumner County, dispatchers at the 911 center can send alerts through the local cable system, Emergency Management director James Fair said. Nearly 70 percent of the county’s population lives outside of Wellington, however, so the county relies on NOAA weather radios, radio and television broadcasts and a widespread use of police scanners by residents to notify the public of emergencies.

A system such as IPAWS just isn’t practical for a cash-strapped rural county such as Sumner, Fair said.

“It boils down to, you just about have to have somebody that works on that on a daily basis,” Fair said. “It’s not a real user-friendly system.”

‘A really nice tool’

Jefferson County issued a Code Red alert advising residents who lived near the scene of a double homicide last month to stay out of the area while they searched for a suspect. The program allows authorities to issue the alerts in a designated geographical area, much like the “polygon” system used by the National Weather Service when issuing watches and warnings.

“It’s a really nice tool for a lot of different agencies,” Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Herrig said. “We’ve sent out alerts on incidents as little as a mail thief.

“It’s more eyes out there to help us,” he said. “We’re a small department and we need all the public’s help that we can get.”

This story was originally published November 6, 2017 at 7:03 AM with the headline "Few Kansas counties use federal program to issue emergency alerts."