Alert Service

Alert Service – Gardner MA

The City of Gardner Massachusetts has accomplished successes in Alert Services including, but not limited to:

From its earliest days to the present, the City of Gardner has prioritized informing its citizens in times of crisis. Whether it’s a communication related simply to an on-street parking ban due to the need to clear off some snow from the Downtown area to any of a number of unforseen circumstances, Gardner Massachusetts utilizes an alert service to inform its citizens.

Code Red is the organized system used by the City. Residents are encouraged to sign up using a very simple online process.

According to the City of Gardner website, “The City of Gardner has contracted with Emergency Communications Network to deliver Emergency Notification Messages through the CodeRED high-speed notification solution. The CodeRED system provides city officials the ability to quickly deliver messages to targeted areas or the entire city. Residents will receive messages pertaining to water main breaks, sanitary sewer overflows (SSO), road closures, weather alerts, Amber Alerts, Police and Fire Emergencies and other such actionable items. “

Businesses and individuals are encouraged to register for Code Red and to update the system if a change in phone number occurs. Geographic information is used to ensure emergency notification calls are received appropriately based on any given situation. Multiple phone numbers can be registered.

In addition to the formalized system with which residents must register, the City of Gardner makes use of other avenues to pass along important information. Social Media platforms such as Facebook are used to pass along important, but not necessarily emergency information. However, in the event of an emergency, Gardner will duplicate on Social Media the information sent out via Code Red.

The Chair City also makes an effective use of Main Stream Media through the availability of officials to newspapers, magazines, radio, and cable operations in the City.

Gardner Massachusetts maintains its own website with which residents may proactively interact and get valuable information.

GardnerMagazine.com interviewed the City of Gardner MA Mayor Michael Nicholson about keeping its citizens informed. This is what he had to say:

Mayor Nicholson: Our Code Red system is something that we try to utilize a lot as a way to really get information out to the public. If there’s something immediate going on. This is what we use whenever there’s a snowstorm coming and we need to let people know about a parking ban. Its also what we utilized throughout the winter storms that we had regarding power outages that were occurring, regarding different ice events that happened before in the wintertime that were here. It’s our immediate way of letting people know what’s going on, be it a water main break, a storm coming, public safety incident, things of that nature is what we really use to get that out there in an immediate fashion. But we also utilize our local media stations, Gardner Magazine, The Gardner News, WGAW, all of our press partners that are out there. Our City’s YouTube page is still very active in getting the actions of government into the comfort of peoples homes, so that they can see what we are doing in City Hall on their behalf each and every day. At the same time we continued our video on demand service through our cable television department. That way they have some of the older videos that are up there as well, that they can pull back from. There’s a lot that we can do and that there’s more we should be doing too. And I think growing our social media presence is a goal that we have in the future. But really making sure that our website, our social media platforms up to date, our YouTube has the latest videos that are going on. And keeping in constant contact with our partners in the media and the press to make sure that as much information we can give to the public is going out as possible

Here’s how emergency management works in the Chair City of Gardner MA.

Mayor Nicholson:  If there’s an emergency going out right now, the first person I normally hear from is one of the 2 chiefs, the fire chief or the police chief. They will normally loop both myself and our emergency management director, Paul Tapolski, in on the situation. We’ll over the phone, figure out how best to handle it. If it’s a long term situation, like what we had with the power outages that caused people to be without heat for an extended period of time, those conversations really have everyone at the table in terms of how are we planning on moving forward – With shelters, with food services, with warming centers, Those are long term plans. If there’s an immediate situation that comes up, some of those things can be handled directly by the chiefs or myself. If we expect this to be a short term situation. But for the long term situations, where you have those natural disasters or long term planning involved, that’s when we bring everyone to the table for those.