The city of Tomball is working to become more efficient in the event of an emergency. Tomball Fire Chief Randy Parr announced at the April 6 City Council meeting that the city is in the process of switching to a new emergency notification system, Civic Ready. The new system will be used to notify residents of inclement weather, disaster events, fires or any other important information needed to be quickly communicated to residents via phone or email. The system will also be used to announce less urgent information that will impact the area, such as delays in trash pickup and road closures. Tomball's existing emergency notification system, Code Red, has been in place since 2007 but has not been utilized in more than a year, Parr said. "Prior to 2012, we were using Code Red quite extensively because we had a lot of different types of emergencies," Parr said. "We had hurricanes, we had wildfires and things like that. We just haven't had much of a need to use it [recently]. And that's good—it means there's no [emergencies] happening on a large scale within our community." Parr said the new program will be less expensive for the city to use but will provide open access to residents and a better level of service than Code Red. "Civic Ready is a component of the city's existing web site, Civic Plus, which makes it much easier to integrate all the information we want to into one website," Parr said. "And based on the ease with which we can access the data and make announcements to our population, [Civic Ready] is much easier than Code Red." The city is expected to activate Civic Ready in mid- to late May, Parr said. The website is in development, and city department heads will undergo training to utilize the system in the coming weeks, he said. To receive emergency notifications, residents will have to enroll through the city's website. When Civic Ready is activated, a link will be available on the front page of the website. Parr said he encouraged residents with questions about the new system to contact the Tomball Fire Department at 281-351-7101.