ON FRIDAY!!!!
Jefferson Parish to Gov. Blanco: Sorry, wrong number
5:11 p.m.
By Matt Scallan
Kenner bureau
Some Jefferson Parish residents got a telephone call from Gov. Blanco urging them to evacuate for Hurricane Rita on Friday, but the automated calls turned out to be wrong numbers.
The company distributing Blanco's message, Voicetouch Communciations, which has completed similar notification programs in Florida, inadvertently included Jefferson Parish in calls telling residents to get out of coastal parishes farther west in Louisiana.
"They pulled the Jefferson Parish phone numbers along with the Jefferson Davis Parish numbers," Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher said. "Once they realized their mistake, they stopped the calls in Jefferson."
Jefferson Davis Parish is about 170 miles west of Jefferson Parish.
Almost 300,000 Blanco calls were delivered. Bottcher said she did not know how many calls were mistakenly made to Jefferson Parish.
The call program is designed to ensure that residents who may not be watching television or listening to the radio get the word to get out, Bottcher said.
In the future, she said, the message will be customized for individual parishes.
Once again, Blanco's office botched it. ;)