In the aftermath of the recent catastrophic flooding in Texas and the statewide 911 system in Pennsylvania going offline for a time last week, the Blair County Department of Emergency Services is redoubling efforts to persuade residents to register for smart911 — while adjusting the parameters of the program so it can send out critical alerts around the clock.

There are currently between 4,000 and 5,000 smart911 registrations in Blair County, which has about 50,500 households, so that means only about 8% of households are registered, according to Cris Fredrickson, operations and training coordinator for the department.

“The goal is to get everybody,” she said.

People can register by going to smart911.com, then following the prompts.

Smart911 enables users to create a safety profile for their families that allows the 911 Center to know what first responders will be dealing with when they come to such homes during emergencies; it also enables the Department of Emergency Services to provide alerts via reverse 911 about severe weather and other problems.

The safety profiles can be highly detailed.

They should include the address of the household, all the phone numbers, including landlines, associated with household members, the number and ages of those members, with their pictures; the medical histories of those members, including disabilities and serious allergies, such as to bee stings; the pets in the household; the vehicles associated with it and miscellaneous information, like where the gas shutoff is located.

Disability information can be critical.

If there’s flooding and someone uses a wheelchair, they may need special help getting to safety.

Knowing a household member has a serious bee sting allergy could help a 911 dispatcher realize why a person from the household might be unable to talk, Fredrickson said.

Profiles should be updated routinely, with the help of prompts that are sent out every six months.

Such updates are especially critical with pictures of children, whose looks change rapidly, Fredrickson said.

Failure to update a profile can also make it more difficult to find a child or older adult with dementia who is missing.

Failure to update information on the number of household members could put firefighters at risk if they end up looking for an individual who’s listed but no longer lives at that address.

The entirety of a profile is available to dispatchers when calls are made from any of the associated phones.

That way, if the son or daughter of a person in medical distress calls for help, the history of the person in distress can be seen by the dispatcher.

The household profile is available throughout the country when anyone with an associated phone goes to a county where smart911 is supported.

Blair is alone among counties with which it is contiguous in supporting smart911, Fredrickson said.

Reverse 911

The reverse 911 alerts can be in the form of texts, email and voicemail — which would be the only method for landlines — and by smart911 app.

Because of the Texas disaster and the state 911 system going down, Blair Emergency no longer limits alerts to between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. — a limitation designed to reduce annoyance for subscribers.

Now, notifications of serious threats come at all hours.

The worst of the Texas disaster occurred in the small hours.

“We don’t want something to be missed,” Fredrickson said. “The only way you’re going to know about something terrible in the middle of the night is for us to tell you.”

Fredrickson has also adjusted the parameters so some alerts will go out automatically.

She sets those alerts so they make sense for the area — there is no tsunami danger here, for instance.

There are other notification systems integrated into the county’s smart911, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency-based Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS); FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) and the multi-agency-based Emergency Alert System (EAS), according to Fredrickson and online sources.

Those help ensure that people visiting this area or passing through can receive alerts.

The department also partners with first responders’ Facebook pages to post alerts.

Residents can sign up for state-based alerts at www.pa.gov.

“I’m all for redundancy,” Fredrickson said.

The reverse 911 notification system isn’t foolproof, as shown by a recent event Fredrickson attended in Williamsburg, where attendees didn’t have cell service, she said.

There are other agencies, such as water authorities, that have their own reverse 911 capabilities, and the department is hoping to increase coordination with them to decrease everyone’s costs, based on economies of scale.

In addition to severe weather alerts, there can be alerts for fires, excessive hot or cold weather, snowstorms and train derailments, especially those that cause hazardous materials spills, which can trigger evacuations.

Smart911 here grew out of an effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to ensure that people with disabilities weren’t left behind.

The company that provided the service at first was Rapid Notify, which was purchased eventually by Rave, which is now owned by Motorola, according to Fredrickson.

The Local Emergency Planning Committee pays for the county’s smart911.

The LEPC’s main function is to help ensure the county is ready to handle hazardous materials incidents at sites where such materials are used or stored.