(09/28/18)  From time to time people will call the Emergency Management Office and inquire why they weren’t called for the last flood.   Most of the time the person didn’t get a call because they were not in the area the call was sent to.   Now is a good time to go over how Code Red works.    The City of North Wildwood, like most municipalities in the County, has a contract with Code Red to send out calls to residents.    Code Red can be accessed by emergency managers by either the Internet or Phone.    The process takes three steps – first we select the Audience -the Audience is the residents and it is geographic based – the emergency managers select an area of town that we want to send a message to or we can select the entire town;  next we create the message – which can voice,  tty, email, Code Red mobile app, and text message; and lastly we create a scenario which is simply connecting a audience and message together.  We then set a time to launch the scenario.  This takes a few minutes to do so we have canned scenarios for the frequently situations we encounter, such as flooding  from rain, tidal flooding, tornado, or snow emergency.    Currently police, fire and OEM have the ability to create and send messages and most messages are sent by Police Dispatch at the request of a NWOEM staff member or Police Shift supervisor.

Now that you know how Code Red works how do you get on the “list”.   From time to time we get a call from someone who wants to be added to the list.  Before Code Red many years ago we had a list where you had to opt in on a flood warning list.   As Code Red is a basically a reverse 9-1-1 call all Verizon and Comcast wired phones are automatically in the Code Red database.    These numbers are updated on a regular basis directly with Code Red.    As many of these numbers can be un-listed we have no ability to see if your number is in the system.   Code Red allows and we recommend that you sign up your cell phone and email address to be certain you don’t miss the calls.   You can do so by clicking on the Code Red link located on the left hand side of the Ready.northwildwood.com website.   At the end you will be asked to create an account – it is a good idea to do so that you can go back and add, change or delete information.   Remember you can add as many numbers as you want and if you enter a number that is already in the system – you will only get one call as the Code Red system recognizes duplicates and only sends one call.

Now that you are registered – why didn’t you get a call?  Remember all calls go to a specific geographic area which is the service address for the Verizon and Comcast landline phones and the address you put in when you entered your information at the Code Red website.    Other than city wide calls which are only used for events that will affect the entire city most calls are for either flooding by rain and tidal flooding.   The OEM staff picked out the areas that are regularly affected by those two situation and created two different area (or audiences).   Sometimes water will show up elsewhere or exceed the area designated.

The first map shows the area or audience that the tidal flooding calls go to.

The next map shows the area or audience that the flooding from rain goes to.

Lastly we get calls from people that signed up their cell phones and email addresses and have moved out of the area and don’t want to get calls.   If they have created an account when they added their numbers they can simply login to the Code Red website and delete the account.     If they forgot their login or neglected to create one and want to take their names out they can contact the OEM office  and leave a message with name, address, number and email address they want deleted.    A staff member will add that information to the the do not call list.