When an emergency strikes the North Shore, who ya gonna call? More than 50,000 people in North and West Vancouver found the answer to that question is. .. them, after the North Shore Emergency Management Office used its "rapid alert" system in a widespread manner for the first time this weekend.
With temperatures plummeting below freezing and darkness falling, the North Vancouver RCMP called on the emergency database to send out automated phone calls - and in some cases, text messages and emails - to alert the public to a missing elderly woman with dementia.
About 38,000 calls went out to numbers in North Vancouver Friday night, urging residents to check for signs of Joan Warren.
Another batch of about 25,000 calls - some of them repeats - went out to a wider area, including West Vancouver, on Saturday.
The alert system, which uses a database maintained by the North Shore Emergency Management Office, has been in place for about 18 years. It was primarily set up to deal with disasters like earthquakes, but most people don't know about it, said Dorit Mason, North Shore emergency coordinator.
The system is paid for by Cannexus, at a cost of about $21,000 a year.
The system uses listed phone numbers and associated addresses from the public white pages to send out alerts within particular geographic areas. Residents can also sign up
to register their cellphones and email addresses.
The actual "robocalling" is done by a contracted third party with phone systems based elsewhere.
Mason said emergency responders had a good response from the public following the alerts although some people were annoyed they had been called.
Jack Chivo, a West Vancouver resident, said he has no problem with the phone call, but is still wondering how the system got his recent email address. "That's known only to a close number of friends," he said.
Neither the emergency management office nor the RCMP was able to give specific criteria under which the system will - or won't - be used in future.
Public safety officials were to meet and discuss the issue Tuesday afternoon.
