City Will Launch Mass Alert System

 in March caused a much bigger scare in Watsonville. 

Watsonville—three miles inland—was unscathed by the tsunami, but the communications disaster that resulted when  led the city to change how it handles emergency situations.

Watsonville police will launch Nixle, a program that sends text and email alerts to users, later this month, Deputy Police Chief Rudy Escalante said Wednesday.

The service will be bilingual and is free for residents.

“The biggest challenge has been trying to make sure we reach our Spanish-speaking community," Escalante said, explaining that concern is emergency notifications can cause unnecessary panic. "What the tsunami taught us is we have several dialects within the Watsonville community so we want to make sure the message gets out there appropriately and is not perceived wrong."

People can sign up online at nixle.com by entering their address, email and phone number. They can choose to have text messages sent to their cell phones and also can receive emails.

There are three tiers of messages: alert, advisory and community. Alerts are emergency, must-know information. Advisories are for traffic-related issues like road closures, detours and accidents, as well as public safety, health and weather. Community messages are for other information that is not time-sensitive.

The goal is “to get the information out there as quickly as possible to make sure people are informed,” Escalante said. 

Watsonville Mayor Daniel Dodge has said disaster preparedness is one of his priorities.

City staff completed a two-hour full-scale emergency response disaster drill Wednesday. Also, some staffers are being trained this week to use Nixle, Escalante said.

The city was looking to add Nixle service before the tsunami. It will be one of a variety of tools, including social media via Facebook and Twitter, used to keep residents informed.

In addition to emergencies, Nixle notifications could be a crime-fighting tool.

Escalante said the police department has seen a huge increase in community involvement in reporting and solving crime and “this is another way to engage them.”

Santa Cruz police launched Nixle in March 2010 and the feedback in Santa Cruz has been 100 percent positive, according to police spokesman Zach Friend.

“Our communities are obtaining information in new ways and it’s essential that law enforcement provide information via these new means," Friend said. "Nixle allows our agency to reach people via their cell phones or email in ways that a traditional newspaper or television station can’t."

In Santa Cruz, police send out about 20 messages a year for high-profile incidents, such as when prisoner Maurice Ainsworth escaped from custody at Dominican Hospital last fall and held hostages in a home in the Delaveaga neighborhood, Friend said. It's also been used for massive traffic problems at the intersection of highways 1 and 9, and when children or disabled adults go missing.

Offering Nixle will cost the city of Watsonville $1,500 a year, Escalante said.