Evaluation of the use of Reverse 911 in Santa Clara County

Reverse 9-1-1
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Introduction
Reverse 9-1-1 is a communication system that upholds public safety. This communication system was developed by the custodian communication, which is part of the larger EADS in North America. It was initially known as Plant CML (Sammamish, 2010). This system has found application in communication between groups of people who are located in the same area, in the United States and Canada. It makes use of telephone numbers’ database and addresses associated with them. This information is tied together in a system known as the geographical Information system in a way that emergency notifications recorded can be delivered to a group of telephone subscribers in a given region or locality. This system has substantially been used in the United States. This is a safety system that was designed in order to inform a large group of people in a given geographical location about an impending danger. This system has been successfully used in a number of areas including in Boston during the 2010 water emergency. Through this system, the residents of this area were advised to boil their drinking water. Approximately 1500 residents of Colorado were as well notified using this system about the 2004 bulldozer rampage (Pierceall, 2010). These among others are incidences were Reverse 9-1-1 has been successfully used. One significant disadvantage associated with this system is its ability to cater for people faced with the same danger but in different locations. As a good example, a danger that involves consumers of a certain product who are not in one locality but are spread over a wide area may not be effectively handled by this system. This is because numbers of people in the same region are registered as one group. Notifications are sent to a group of people in the same region. This poses a challenge as far as sending of these notifications are concerned. There is the need to develop a notification system that will take care of diversity in the location of the people who are in danger (Henry, 2010).
Santa Clara County is among many other counties that have embraced and extensively used reverse 9-1-1 system in an attempt to deal with emergencies. The medical delivery department has employed this system in providing ambulance services in emergencies. The county of Santa Clara has signed a contract with rural metro to deliver ambulance services to emergency (Jackson, 2008). The success of this program has substantially been applauded as a major step towards safety in Santa Clara County. Under this contact, ambulances are now able to arrive at the scene of emergency on time, as opposed to the initial delay.
Yet in another area where Santa Clara County has been, using Reverse 9-1-1 is in dealing with emergency fire. This system, in Santa Clara County, was expanded to include the fire emergencies in 2008 (Pierceall, 2009). The residents were requested to register free in the Santa Cruz website that deals with consolidated emergency. The registration involved giving details of one’s cell phone number and address of residence. The system has the ability of sending many messages to thousands of people who are in the same geographical region over a remarkably short period. A good demonstration of this was in the Lehigh cement factory incidence on 15 October 2011 at 8am (Pierceall, 2009). Reverse 9-1-1 information system was not effectively employed during this period. The people were able to receive information on their landline telephone numbers. This was possible majorly because the reverse 9-1-1 system had been expanded to include this type of calamities. The system could not reach majority of the targeted people because cell phones had not been automatically registered in this service (Pierceall, 2009). Therefore, few people received the notification. The notifications also delayed in reaching the people. Therefore, the system was not employed effectively in solving the problem.
As such any, emergency notifications can be sent to many people in the event that there is a firebreak up in the areas. So far, the system has proven to be effective in this regard. This service was also expanded in Santa Clara County in 2009 in order to include mobile phones (Pierceall, 2009). This has been commented as an awesome tool in delivering a massage to many people at once. This article seeks to bring out the effectiveness of reverse 9-1-1 system in dealing with emergency. The Shooting at the Lehigh cement plant is taken as the case study.
Lehigh Cement Plant shootings
The Lehigh cement plant is a permanent plant that is located in the high-tech silicon hub. This is a busy work place with many workers. The major interest in this study is the shooting that took place in the plant on Wednesday 15 October 2011 (Derrick, 2010). This incident left three people dead, and seven others critically injure (Derrick, 2010). Additionally, of interest is finding out the communication systems that had been put in place and how effective they were in dealing with this emergency.
The main goal of mass notification was to bring to the people’s attention any impeded dangers. This was to be effected by sending a massage throw the existing telephone systems. The intended effect was to help people find their way out of the danger in a reasonable time. This, however¸ was not achieved since three people dies without escaping. During the incident, a disgruntled employee set the plant on fire and shot one of the employees to death (Derrick, 2010). He then ran away, and attempted to steal a car from a certain woman. When the woman refused, he killed her.
Throughout the incident, the employees were notified about the series of murder that was in the area in a number of ways. The media, to begin with, was at the forefront in bringing to the people’s attention about the incident. The media served to inform the people on the necessary security precautions that they could take in order to keep safe during this dangerous period. This, however, had little effect since the people were busy at that time and remarkably few were in contact with the media (Derrick, 2010). The media tools used included magazines, television, and radio stations. All these worked together in notifying the people in the concerned area on the appropriate steps to take in order to protect themselves from the murder (Henry, 2012).
The usage of the media had, however, a number of limitations. First, it was not specific to the targeted area and group. Many of the people that were informed were not among the affected ones. It, therefore, served to create more tension in the area than solve the intended problem. In addition, most of the targeted people were not reached by the notification of the media houses (Henry, 2012). This is because most of them were not in contact with their, radios and television at the time when the news were being aired. Therefore, they were not reached by the information that was meant to safeguard them from the danger.
Reverse 9-1-1 information system was not effectively employed during this period. The people received information on their landline telephone numbers late. Some people were also not reached with the information (Henry, 2012). This was not able to reach out to a majority of the targeted people. Therefore, the system was not employed effectively used in solving the problem. This can be proven by the fact that three people died in the incident (Henry, 2012).
However, the implementation of this system had a number of limitations. To begin with, there was delayed communication to the targeted group of people. Given that the incident was not anticipated in any way, a number of people had to lose their lives before the information could finally reach the people, whose lives were in danger (Henry, 2012). This was because the individual involved in the murder begun shooting his fellow employees after he felt he was not contented with the operations of the plant (Henry, 2012). The management had not met his demands. There was no prior indication that such as incident could occur and turn out to be as fatal as it did. The incidence, therefore, led to the death of three people before its hazardous residents of potential could be unde...