Warn Central Texas

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

A late-season wildfire tore through the suburbs of Denver in early January 2022, shocking residents and destroying buildings. According to authorities, the emergency alert system didn’t reach most residents. Alerts went out to the landline numbers in their database that had been enrolled when their system was created years before. Many didn’t get the alerts because the phone lines were burned by the fire. But the bigger reason was that most people no longer used landlines. This problem is not unique. Many emergency alert systems, which are intended to save lives, are outmoded. Their databases consist largely of legacy landline phone numbers going to places like government buildings, large employers, and call centers. Some go to fax machines or computer terminals. This disaster was a wake-up call for the Denver suburb. But not for Travis County, Texas. Travis County Commissioner Brigid Shea, in partnership with CAPCOG (Capital Area Council of Governments), had detected a similar problem with their alert system, Warn Central Texas, in 2018. After unsuccessful efforts to increase enrollment, CAPCOG automatically enrolled area cell phone numbers in partnership with their vendor, dramatically improving their reach. Now when there’s a disaster, life-saving alerts are reaching many more people.