Tragically, April 16, 2007, is a date that will long reverberate in America’s collective memory.

That morning, Seung Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va., shot and killed two people in a residence hall shortly after 7 a.m. He then returned to his own residence hall, changed out of his bloody clothes and left again. Two hours later, shortly after 9 a.m., as classes were beginning, Cho entered Norris Hall carrying two semi-automatic handguns, about 400 rounds of ammunition, a hammer and a knife. After chaining the main doors shut from the inside, he began entering classrooms on the second floor, shooting anyone he saw. In little more than two hours, 33 people were killed, and 17 were wounded. Still others were injured jumping from windows.

Although the school had what was considered an adequate emergency notification system at the time, in fact, as studies by the state of Virginia and an internal investigation by Virginia Tech later acknowledged, notification was slow and inefficient. For two full hours after the initial shooting, no alert went out.

 “Virginia Tech was a huge wake-up call not only for campuses but for communities and companies all over this country,” Karla Lemann, program leader at Morris Township, NJ-based Honeywell, told HSToday. “VT’s e-mail alert system—and frankly at the time it was better than most—not only missed a large portion of the community, those who didn’t happen to be in a position to receive or see the e-mail at the time, but was operating essentially in the dark. They really had no way of confirming who got the messages and who didn’t, or to focus their messages and communications based on where people actually were.”

New efforts

Over the past 18 months, there’s been an attempt to develop systems that are faster to deploy, more flexible and more robust, utilizing the full array of devices that are now integral to how people communicate day to day.

The promise of “multi-modal” alert messaging was dramatized during the 5.4 magnitude earthquake that occurred on July 29 in Southern California. Emergency managers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus used Burlingame, Calif.-based AtHoc’s “IWSAlerts” to notify and inform its campus population. Within minutes of the earthquake, the first alerts were sent to over 48,000 individuals who received the information via desktop pop-up alerts, emails or voice or text messages. Students were informed that an earthquake had taken place and were warned about the possibility of aftershocks following the main quake. They were also requested to tune in to the campus AM radio station for additional instructions. 

According to Jack Powazek, assistant vice president of chancellor services at the university, authorities reached 97 percent of their population of 45,000 in 15 minutes.  “You need a variety of communication in that situation. Plus, every person receives information in different ways,” Powazek said.

Enhanced alert systems also are making it possible for emergency managers to pinpoint the sending of their messages to very well defined geographic zones, customizing content based on who is receiving the message.

“Research shows that when people get too many warnings that don’t apply to them, they become desensitized and start tuning out,” said Art Botterell, community warning system manager for the Sheriff of Contra Costa County, Calif. “We’re constantly looking to increase the relevance of our warning delivery,” he said.

To this end, Contra Costa County has deployed Reston, Va.-based SquareLoop Inc.’s Mobile Alert Network to send geographically targeted messages to subscribers based on their actual location as they travel. 

“We have a very large geographic area to cover and a widely distributed population,” said Botterell. “Now we can draw an area on a computer across particular sections of a map and have a message pinpointed to the actual threats faced by specific geographic zones. We had a warehouse fire recently and were able to get out a message immediately only to people in the vicinity that needed to be evacuated. That kind of pinpoint helps both to eliminate the kind of widespread panic you might get when you broadcast to a whole county, and also minimizes the amount of extraneous warnings people are subjected to.”

The District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) and the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)’s “DC Police Alert” sends real time alerts to businesses about crimes committed in their neighborhood via e-mail and text messages to cell phones, Blackberries, pagers and other devices.

When a crime is reported in their area, MPD officers send a text message via email and cell phones to participating businesses, alerting them that a crime has been committed and providing them with a description of the alleged perpetrator. Businesses can reply to the crime alert, text tips to 50-411 or call 911 with follow up information. 

“Most arrests occur within minutes of a crime, not hours, after it is reported,” said Chief of Police Cathy Lanier. “With our crime alerting system, we’re instantly putting thousands of eyes and ears on the streets looking for the suspect.”

Obstacles

As with many deployments of next-generation technology, the real hurdles to success are social rather than technological, according to Houston Thomas, public safety business development manager at Vernon Hills, Ill.-based CDW Government, the company which issued the report This is A Test: Updating America’s Emergency Alert Infrastructure, a study of urban alert systems nationwide.

“You can’t make technology innovation independent of public awareness and education,” Thomas told HSToday. “There are cities with enormously sophisticated systems, but low awareness and usage by the population—areas where 60 percent to 70 percent of the population still don’t know about the system.”

 In addition, Baker added, despite clear progress, many college campus programs still have only a minority of their students participating in campus alerts. “Going forward, education and public awareness are key,” Thomas explained. “It’s taken decades, but by now every household, even every grade school child, knows about 911. It’s painted on every police car. Awareness of alert notification has to become just as ubiquitous and I believe it soon will.”