POINTE-CLAIRE – In 2011 the West Island had a water problem on its hands. In several municipalities, there was a potential issue with contaminated water. Towns like Pointe-Claire suddenly discovered it was extremely difficult to get vital information to the public in a timely fashion.
“The problem was that it took us eight hours” to reach people, said Mayor Bill McMurchie. The town implemented a system called “Code Red,” which simultaneously calls all phone numbers registered in the town to deliver messages.
“Basically what it permitted us to do was contact all of our water users within seconds,” McMurchie said.
In the age of myriad communications platforms, municipalities are grappling with a strange problem – what’s the most reliable way to send an emergency message? The Montreal borough of Cote-des-Neiges-NDG recently launched an effort dubbed “Citizen Alert,” which targets a young demographic already hip to smartphones and the Internet. The system delivers advisories through an app and a website, and is being touted by the borough as a potential pilot project for the rest of Montreal.
“We did it on our own because we wanted to do it,” said Lionel Perez, the mayor of the borough. The genesis of the project occurred, Perez said, during last year’s blizzard, which overwhelmed city snow removal services.
“It would have been very helpful during the winter with the big snowstorm,” said City spokesperson Michel Therrien. “But we didn’t have the tool at the time.”
But the borough’s new system is more geared toward a younger demographic, one at home with technology. For the more traditional set, McMurchie touted another communications method his municipality constructed — a giant electronic billboard.
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