CodeRED system hastens recovery of 14-year-old girl

St. Petersburg Times ^ | February 11, 2004 | DUANE BOURNE

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The new message delivery system is far more efficient than the old one and operates at a fraction of the cost.

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BROOKSVILLE - The 14-year-old girl vanished from a Bible study group last Wednesday. The only thing left behind was the church's cordless telephone she used to make a call and a backpack filled with her belongings.

Racing against time to find a girl they thought was abducted, Hernando County investigators went to CodeRED, a new message delivery system that alerted residents in the area of the girl's disappearance.

The system got results. The girl was found early Thursday morning.

Had it not been for the automated system, which funnels messages to residents in a matter of minutes, the case of the girl who drove off with a registered sexual offender could have ended as tragically as the case of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, Sheriff Richard Nugent said on Monday.

"Had it not been for CodeRED, I am convinced that we would not have put together a case so quickly and locate the vehicle," Nugent said during a press conference unveiling the system.

Designed by Ormond Beach-based Emergency Communications Network, CodeRED uses Internet mapping software and data from financial and telephone records to notify residents street by street or in larger areas in cases of natural disasters, missing children, terrorist threats, prisoner escapes, large controlled burns, street closings and power outages.

Because data is pooled for a number of records, residents with unlisted telephone numbers might not receive messages. Those residents and those who want to ensure their contact information is in the system can enter their information through a link on the sheriff's Web page: http://www.hcso.hernando.fl.us

In Hernando County, the Sheriff's Office, Hernando County Emergency Management, Hernando County Fire Rescue, Spring Hill Fire Rescue, the county's utilities and public works department and the Hernando County School District all plan to use the system.

By utilizing the state-of-the-art system, officials at each agency can deliver prerecorded messages from either their offices or remote locations via a secured Web site, which adds to its flexibility, county emergency management director Thomas Leto said.

Statewide, Boca Raton and Fort Myers have used CodeRED to notify residents of water interruptions and the need to boil water, a process that could have taken three days if they used their old, antiquated system, according to the Emergency Communications Network Web site.

CodeRED replaces the messaging system designed by Tennessee-based Dialogic Communications Corp., which cost $18,000 a year to operate and was limited in the number of people it could notify in one hour.

According to the sheriff's information director, Bill Kicklighter, the antiquated notification system cost about $15,000 more a year to operate and could only call about 2,400 people in one hour primarily because the volume of calls bogged down the hardware and telephone lines.

"Now, we could do 2,400 calls in about two minutes," Kicklighter said on Monday.

CodeRED costs about $5,000 a year to operate and places about 60,000 calls to residents in one hour, according to Nugent.

The new system is viewed as a quicker option to issuing a statewide Amber Alert, used for missing and endangered children.

During the search for the teenage girl who was reported missing from outside Community Bible Church at 5041 Griffin Road last Wednesday, the Internet-based service created a perimeter around the area south of Brooksville and placed 462 calls well before the criteria was met for declaring an Amber Alert.

Of the 462 messages sent to the residences in the area, Kicklighter said 75 percent of the calls were completed. And of that number, one resident on Griffin Road asked her neighbor if she had received the message, eventually giving investigators their first clue: the cream-colored motor home which had been mysteriously parked in the area.

Once the girl had been found in New Port Richey, officials sent a second followup message, advising people that she was safe and a 41-year-old sexual offender was in custody.

"For us, this works faster than the Amber Alert," Nugent said. "The reason it works so well is because of the speed. The timeliness is so important in regards to an emergency. I am convinced that if it was not for this system, the girl would not have been found as quick."

- Duane Bourne can be reached at 352 754-6114. Send e-mail to dbourne@sptimes.com

[dawn53]

Hmmm. Don't know what it's called, but we have something similar in our neighborhood. I have often gotten a phone call with an automated message alerting residents of our community of a certain threat. Usually it has been a series of burglaries. The automated message is tape recorded by our community officer.

[CharlotteVRWC]

A few months ago, there was a helicopter above my house and immediate vicinity that was obviously doing a search (it was evening hours). It was loud, and the noise went on for several hours. I knew something was going on, but expected it was a burgler or something similar, so I made sure my house was locked up and the alarm system on, etc. I have a young daughter, and didn't want to go outside looking around with a flashlight by myself. I didn't hear anything on the news about what was happening.

The next day, the newspaper said a little girl that was separated from her parents, and decided to walk a short distance home from the mall to her house. She had a learning disability so it took her a few hours to find her way home. Luckily she was unharmed and made it home okay. But I was a bit dismayed there wasn't some kind of alert to our area residents to be on the lookout. My house backs up to a wooded area and is a shortcut from the mall to a residential area. The folks in my neighborhood would have been happy to have been on the lookout.