The National Association of Counties gave Warn Central Texas an Achievement Award in the category of risk and emergency management for its efforts to maximize resident enrollment in the emergency regional notification system and its ability to reach more than 60 percent of the region’s cellphones. Travis County Commissioner Brigid Shea, a major advocate for increasing Warn Central Texas’ reach, led the effort to apply for the recognition.
Warn Central Texas allows public safety personnel to contact residents during a disaster through text messages, phone calls and emails. Many communities, including the CAPCOG region, struggle with voluntary registration of cellphone information into such potentially lifesaving systems and have a low percentage of their population’s digital contact information enrolled. Recognizing the gap, CAPCOG, with support of the 10 counties and many municipalities, automatically enrolled a large percentage of area cellphone numbers in partnership with regional notification system’s vendor, dramatically improving the system’s reach. Prior to this effort, landline phones could already be contacted through Warn Central Texas. CAPCOG and local governments continue to promote self-registrations through WarnCentralTexas.org as it provides the most accurate way of contacting residents in a manner they choose.
