By Katie Farrell
Staff writer
July 07, 2008 12:29 am AMESBURY — One year after a Seabrook Station siren falsely sounded in Amesbury, causing panicked residents to flood 911 with phone calls as they struggled to find information on what was happening, the town has received a local grant to fund a mass notification system. The town's application for a grant from the Amesbury Healthcare Charitable Trust was approved last Thursday, Mayor Thatcher Kezer said. The Municipal Council will vote on whether to accept the grant during a meeting tomorrow. The $7,500 grant will fund the "CodeRED" mass emergency notification system for one year, and the town will pay for it thereafter. Efforts to get Seabrook Station to kick in a portion of the costs appear to have failed. Last July 13, a nuclear-power-plant warning siren on Lions Mouth Road went off and started emitting a wail about 11 p.m. So many residents flooded the 911 dispatch center that callers were diverted to dispatch centers in neighboring towns. Police could not hear the siren from their headquarters downtown, so they didn't find out about the alarm until residents began to call. Seabrook Station was unaware the alarm was sounding until they were contacted by police. The siren malfunction was due to a faulty alarm. Kezer said the incident highlighted the need for an emergency notification system and began the process of looking to secure funding for a system. "We need a reverse 911 system in Amesbury," Kezer said at that time. "That's what we're lacking." He initially expressed hope that Seabrook Station would help to fund the program. "It was a case of trying to find outside funding," Kezer said this week. CodeRED is one of numerous mass notification systems, such as Reverse 911. It sends out an alert or message to residents using the telephone. Town officials must approve the message and choose which households receive the message. Congressman John Tierney, D-Salem, also voiced his support that Seabrook Station should help fund notification systems in those communities that surround the power plant. His staff organized meetings among local officials, representatives from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and Juliette Kayyem, undersecretary of homeland security for the commonwealth, and Seabrook Station to discuss the issue. "Congressman Tierney has been advocating for an alert system to be made available for the residents of Amesbury and surrounding towns. His office will continue to work with local officials to address problems encountered with last year's sounding of the warning device," Communications Director Catherine McKenna Ribeiro said in a statement released by his office. Seabrook Station has 23 neighboring towns in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire inside its official evacuation zone, some of which have Reverse 911 or a similar system, including Newburyport. The Federal Emergency Management Agency does not recognize Reverse 911, CodeRED or similiar systems as notification tools that power plants can use instead of devices such as warning sirens. They are considered "supplemental" warning tools. Kezer said this week he had not heard "much movement recently" from Seabrook Station about funding a notification system in Amesbury. "I didn't want to pass up this opportunity (to get the grant)," he said. Kezer said CodeRED has numerous benefits. Accessed by a Web page, the program allows a subscriber to log into the system and highlight or circle an area of town it wishes to send a message or alert to. With the program, Amesbury will not have to buy or house any software or telephone lines to go along with the program, Kezer said.The program can be accessed on any computer, the mayor said. CodeRED can call up to 60,000 numbers per hour. "It's a pretty slick system," Kezer said.
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