Promising new storm warning system gets off to cloudy start

Feb. 25– Hardin County’s new phone-based weather alert system got off to a cloudy start when it failed to notify thousands of residents Thursday night to tornado, severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings issued by the National Weather Service.

"I’m as disappointed as anybody it didn’t go off flawlessly," said Hardin County E-911 Director David Alexander.

With more severe weather forecast for Sunday, the president of the company hired by Hardin County E-911 to provide the $17,000 annual service issued a public apology late this afternoon.

"This breakdown of service was fully the responsibility of Inspiron Logistics and was in no way caused by county personnel. We take full ownership," said Scott Dettling in a statement.

The "Wireless Emergency Notification System," or WENS, went live Monday with some 13,000 landline phone numbers in Hardin County automatically entered into the system.

Alexander said another 1,300 cell phone users had already subscribed to the system since then.

The system is designed to send voice, text or email notices of severe weather warnings, depending on the subscriber’s selection.

But Thursday night, dozens of comments on The Courier’s Facebook page quickly indicated WENS notifications were going out only sporadically.

Bobby Crumby, a Savannah police officer, posted he "got all three types of alerts. The voice call showed up as a voice mail." Said Rae Wade, "Done great. Thanks for this new service...nice comfort to have. Two thumbs up!"

On the other side of the spectrum, Rebecca and Allen Franks typed, "Landline didn’t get anything, my cell didn’t get the tornado warning, and my husband’s cell didn’t get anything. Hope they get the bugs out." Renea Benson Johnson reported, "I signed up for the cell phone notice and got nothing! I was disappointed!"

Dettling blamed technical difficulties caused by a "reorganization of users and groups within the account." This resulted in an "adverse reaction" with the system’s communications from the National Weather Service.

He said voice alerts went out to between 4,000 and 6,000 Hardin County subscribers over a period of two hours. At that point, because the severe weather event had passed, the decision was made to stop the notification process for subscribers not yet contacted.

"I would like to personally apologize to the individuals who had to contend with the stress of this ordeal throughout the night. Moving forward," said Dettling, "we as a company feel it’s critical to offer no excuses, once again taking full responsibility and making it our highest priority to regain the county’s confidence in the system."

Alexander said a test of the Inspiron Logistics WENS system will likely be conducted sometime next week.

There were no reports of damage or injury as a result of the storm, Hardin County Fire Chief Melvin Martin said.

(For a link to sign up for WENS notifications, scroll down on the home page and click on the story, "Hardin County Unveils Storm Warning Robo-caller," under More Articles or Latest News.)