County emergency service officials are giving early high marks to the province's new Alberta Emergency Alert (AEA) system, which is jumping head first into the instantaneous world of social media.The new system is replacing the antiquated Emergency Public Warning System (EPWS), which was implemented in 1992.Using digital technology, AEA is expected to reach a far wider audience in the province, and be more accessible as the population increasingly uses Facebook and Twitter to gets its news easier and faster. At the same time AEA will use the Internet to instantaneously cut into radio and television broadcasts with potentially life-saving critical alerts. The old system was activated by trained users who labourously delivered vital information by telephone to citizens and media outlets.ìI am thinking it is going to be great in terms of advising residents of any potential disaster because of the use of social media which the old system did not have,î said Lisa Dormuth, emergency management coordinator for Red Deer County. ìIt will reach a lot more people than the old system.îEarlier this month Dormuth and other municipal and emergency response stakeholders in both Red Deer and Mountain View counties, as well as representatives from Central Alberta towns and law enforcement agencies, were in Innisfail to take in a training session facilitated by the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, a division of Alberta Municipal Affairs.For local emergency response officials the seminar was timely as it came just a few weeks after the region was either hit or threatened with multiple tornado strikes and warnings.ìHopefully it will give them (residents) a better opportunity to prepare for severe weather events,î said Dormuth.The province has been working on replacing EPWS for the past few years and is now using AEA alongside the old EPWS until the new system's official launch.ìI wasn't trained on the old system but people have said it was cumbersome in getting information out in a proper and timely way,î said Kevin Heppler, deputy director of municipal emergency management for Mountain View County. ìIt is real easy to enter an alert on the new system, and a real advancement by the province for the safety of people in Alberta.ìThere is a section on the new system for practice alerts,î added Heppler, who also attended the Innisfail seminar. ìWe can go in there as often as we want to train. It is set up to do a real alert or practice. It is nice to be able to do that and not be pressured.îThe new system is a ìdramatic shiftî and enhancement over the way the province has communicated and delivered emergency alerts to the public, said John Muir, public affairs officer with Alberta Municipal Affairs. Aside from the fact the old system required far more manual labour to operate, AEA is just faster, more efficient and will reach a greater percentage of the population through the instantaneous connection to the Internet and social media, said Muir.ìIt means it will allow citizens to have greater advance knowledge of events and what to do,î said Muir.He said the province is expecting the new system to have about 1,200 users across the province with many more coming on board in the near future.ìWe will never really be done. There will always be new people coming on board,î said Muir. ìTraining will be ongoing.îIn order to have AEA compatible with today's technical advancements in the private broadcast industry, the government has already delivered 30 new packages of hardware, at no cost, to broadcast stations. The digitally based hardware will allow the new system to instantly cut into programming in the event of a critical emergency.ìThe success of the new program depends on partnerships. It is a multi-partner relationship that includes the private sector, municipalities, Environment Canada and police,î said Muir, adding he expects many more private broadcast companies to soon come on board.He said AEA's public visibility will be enhanced through a new web icon feature that will soon be offered to media outlets, including newspapers. The idea behind the icon is to have it placed on media website home pages with the ability to light up in different colours depending on the type of alert, such as red for critical or yellow for information.Muir said the official launch of AEA will be this fall. At that time EPWS will be retired.Current alerts are now being posted at www.emergencyalert.alberta.ca and on the Alberta Emergency Alert Facebook and Twitter pages.
