Wide Area Rapid Notification News

W.A.R.N. expands further in Charleston, WV, for Kanawha County EMA with multi-year emergency solution.

The Metro Emergency Operations Center of Kanawha County, capital seat of Charleston, West Virginia, recently adopted the W.A.R.N. (Wide Area Rapid Notification) system for public and emergency notification to better protect its estimated 195,413 citizens.

The Metro Emergency Operation Center (known locally as “Metro 911”) was established in 1987 as a joint effort between the City of Charleston and Kanawha County. Metro 911 was set up as a central call center to handle emergency calls for Kanawha County and dispatching the various Police, Fire and EMS units to those calls. The 911 System provides one number to call for all Kanawha County’s emergencies -- saving precious time. Also, having all calls and dispatching from one center, as opposed to 47 separate agencies, allows for a more efficient and thorough coordination of available units in a given area.

Kanawha County is the population center and the center of government for West Virginia. The topography makes a large area of the county conducive to flash flooding. Chemical plants dot the landscape and rivers of the county, three interstates converge upon downtown Charleston, a river supports commercial navigation that passes through the downtown area, and two rail lines flank the downtown. All of these are transportation routes daily for hazardous materials. Consequently, Kanawha required a rapid notification system that was flexible, reliable, and able to notify rapidly to various department employees, and other governmental agencies and the public, in case of a catastrophic event.

A group of emergency management officials were fully trained on the W.A.R.N. system recently and the team learned about W.A.R.N.’s extensive product features including its “find me/follow me” rules, routing and escalation rules, device priority rules and location management properties. These additional features will facilitate their command communications internally, in addition to the benefits of the public notification tools.

W.A.R.N. is one of many enhancement solutions that are on-going in Kanawha County. In the near future, Kanawha Metro 911 is planning to make additional equipment improvements in their emergency operations center.

Kanawha County Metro 911
Matt Gravely - Project Manager