Shenandoah City Council members encouraged residents and business owners during a July 27 meeting to use Smart911, a new safety service that was adopted by Montgomery County in May.
Smart911, provided by Rave Mobile Safety, is a free, online database that enables residents and business owners to preemptively provide information about their households and facilities to emergency call takers and dispatchers. In the event of an emergency, this information can serve as a vital timesaving tool for first responders.
“The majority of the calls we get at 911 are made on cell phones,” said Chip VanSteenberg, executive director of the Montgomery County Emergency Communication District. “But with cell phones, we don’t get the customer’s name or address. With Smart911, if any phone number associated with your profile makes a call to 911, your profile will pop up to the call taker and they have all the information at their fingertips without having to rely on the caller.”
Smart911 serves 32 million people nationwide. In May, Montgomery County became the first county in the state of Texas to adopt the service.
When residents make a safety profile for their household, they can include critical information regarding medical conditions of family members, emergency contacts, details about pets, entry access codes and even upload household floor plans.
With Smart911 Facility, businesses, churches, schools and governmental entities can create a similar profile for their building, providing information about utility shutoffs, emergency supplies and key holders, as well as upload floor plans. The business owner can even create a geofence around the building so that any 911 call made inside the selected area will automatically give call takers information about the nearest facility.
“We think this is a great product and we certainly want to promote it and formally adopt it as the city’s method,” Shenandoah City Administrator Greg Smith said. “It will help a lot with communication across the board and I think it’s a great service that 911 does provide to all of our residents and businesses and we need to take advantage of that.”
Once a safety profile has been created, residents will be prompted to verify the information every six months to ensure it is up to date.
Montgomery County sends out emergency notifications through Code Red, while Shenandoah alerts residents through Connect-CTY. The county’s contract with Code Red will terminate Sept. 1 and the city’s contract with Connect-CTY will end Oct. 1. In order to stay informed, residents will need to create a Smart911 profile before those communication services stop.
“We’ve got 28,000 people registered with Code Red and that’s not a lot in a county of half a million folks or so,” VanSteenberg said. “We hope we’re going to get a better response by offering both Smart911 and Rave Alerts together.”
Not only will the new system provide better safety for residents, but it will also save the city $2,800 annually, Smith said.
Because Rave Mobile Safety is a private company, information submitted online is protected from the Freedom of Information Act and open records requests. The information is only made available to call dispatch if a 911 call is made pertaining to that profile.
Smart911 is working to make that information available to first responders in the future.
“One of the big reasons the city is switching to Smart911 is because it offers a much better service,” Smith said. “We are going to try to really push this to get everyone signed up on this because the power behind this tool is amazing. The technology is here and we’re very fortunate that the Montgomery County 911 Board adopted this.”
To create a Smart911 profile for a household or business, visit www.smart911.com.
