Inside Perry, Georgia
Inside Perry, Georgia
Why Your Weather App Isn’t Enough: Inside Houston & Perry Alerts
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We sit down with Houston County Fire Chief and EMA Director Christopher Stoner to unpack the Houston County's move from CodeRED to Houston Alerts/Perry Alerts, and how smarter technology makes Perry and Houston County safer while cutting the noise.
We walk through the RFP that led to Rave, the benefits of pairing with existing Motorola systems, and why usability is a lifesaver when you need to launch an alert from the field. Chief Stoner explains how precise geofencing lets teams draw a polygon around an affected neighborhood for a hazmat incident, tornado warning, or boil water advisory, so people outside the area aren’t jolted awake.
You’ll learn how re-registering modernized an outdated database and put residents in full control of the information they receive, including emergency weather, public safety alerts, trash delays, water service updates, and community events, as well as how they receive it, whether by call, text, email, push notification, or Alexa.
We cover Smart911 privacy safeguards, what data is useful for first responders, and how local caller IDs and familiar emails help people trust the messages they receive. Most importantly, we make a case for why local alerts beat generic weather apps: polygon-level accuracy for your address, not countywide alarms that don’t apply to your block.
Ready to tailor your notifications? Sign up through houstoncountyga.gov or the City of Perry website, choose only the updates you want, and set how and when you want to be reached.
If you need help, call 478-542-2026 and the EMA team will guide you.
If this conversation helped, subscribe, share with a neighbor, and leave a quick review so more Perry residents can get informed faster.
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Visit us at perry-ga.gov.
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Welcome to the Inside Perry Podcast, where you get an inside look at Perry, Georgia's local government. We're glad you chose Perry, where people make the difference. Whether you stay a few hours or a lifetime, your time in Perry will be rewarding and unforgettable. I'm Tabitha Clark, Communications Director for the City of Perry. And welcome to the Inside Perry Podcast. I have a wonderful guest with me today talking about Houston Alerts and Perry Alerts, where we collaborate with the Houston County government. So today, my guest is Chief Christopher Stoner. He is the Houston County Fire Chief and the Emergency Management Agency Director. So, Chief Stoner, welcome to the Inside Perry Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so we're gonna start off right off the bat. So for listeners who may not be familiar, what is Houston Alerts and why was it important to launch this new system?
SPEAKER_02:So Houston Alerts is something that we've had around for many, many years. It was just under a different name previously. It was under Code Red. It's a wonderful system. It allows us to communicate effectively with the citizens throughout the county, regardless of jurisdiction, and push important information out to them, timely information if it's needed.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, great. So as you said, housing alert replaced code red. So what exactly prompted the decision to move away from code red?
SPEAKER_02:So there was two folds to that. One was financial. We had not bid out or put RFP out for new companies to really make sure that our fiscal responsibility was being met. And two, we had noticed some troubling trends in business management with the previous company and just some things that we weren't liking uh with how the system was working and technical glitches and things like that. So we decided to put out the RFP, which was a fantastic process. We had six wonderful companies bid on it. And ultimately we decided with Rave, which is a Motorola company. And because of all of our other Motorola components with our emergency systems, uh we were able to get a pretty good discount through that program, uh stacking different options and things like that through them. So and their platform was actually the most user-friendly for the the group that we compiled to evaluate all of the products, which is extremely important, especially when you're trying to send out just notifications. Absolutely. It's uh it's much, much more user-friendly. I was actually able to send something out from a deer stand. Mm-hmm. You know, for for you.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_02:The old system I would have had to have sat in front of a computer, yes, probably at my office, log in, and and it just would have been time consuming and and very cumbersome.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes. And when time matters, that that's that's not exactly what you want to face, those challenges.
SPEAKER_02:We're always trying to find ways to leverage new technology and improvements and and make things easier and more efficient. So this was just a great opportunity to do that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and talking about that new technology, I know with Code Red, it was limited, especially to what we have now, such as you know, accurate geofencing and different features as well.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, absolutely. This one is is so much more advanced with how we can separate groups out and you can actually target that intended audience so much more accurately with this new system than we could with the previous one. So it it enhances that where people don't get messages that they didn't sign up for or didn't want to receive.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And that that's the way the trend's going, so that is perfect. So uh let's kind of pull back on the bigger picture. So why does emergency notification technology such as this matter more today than even it did five, 10 years ago?
SPEAKER_02:So people aren't sitting in front of a TV screen, they're not listening to the typical radio stations anymore. Um, you know, unless we got something on XM or somehow managed to get into their Apple Play music list, you know, uh getting that notification out it just isn't feasible through the old technologies that we've been accustomed to. So getting these newer technologies where we can hit those cell phones that everybody's got in their hands 24 hours a day now. Yes. Um, you know, or or hit those Alexa devices or the tablets in their houses, things like that. So as technology grows and as society changes with that technology, we have to change with it as well to make sure we're meeting all the needs of the citizens in the county.
SPEAKER_00:So we talked a little bit about this, but how does Houston Alerts improve data accuracy and reliability compared to the previous system?
SPEAKER_02:So and I know it was burdensome for people to have to re-register, but that was a lot of this was us cleaning up that existing database. Um it had become so outdated. We started that the Code Reb program in the mid-2000s.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, wow, okay.
SPEAKER_02:And so a lot of people still had house phones. Oh yeah. You know, some people still had dial-up at that point when we started. That's true. That's true. So uh, you know, how many times has people's cell phone numbers changed? And and we have a fairly transient population, especially with Robins Air Force Base. You know, they may live here three or four years and move on. Right. So us being able to start from scratch and get a true updated data system was was vitally important to make sure that we're actually reaching the people we need to.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Plus it again, it allows them to sign up for those individual message groups and categories of what they want to receive, and we couldn't integrate the old system to the new one and have people be able to register for what they wanted.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. Super important. And like you said, in the grand scheme of things, it's just a good clean slate. So I I totally agree with that. So let's talk a little bit about the inner workings of how Houston alerts work. So what type of alerts are automatically sent to everyone who registers?
SPEAKER_02:So the basic alert is your true emergency weather alerts, is what the the backbone of the system is. So the tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, uh, those kinds of things. So there's only two or three that it's going to send out automatically. And that is the like true life or death. You need to know about this, especially the tornado warnings. And those are initiated through the National Weather Service through a bridge that we have into our program so it incorporates that. And as soon as the weather service issues it, it turns it around and spits it out to everybody that registers. Nice. Um, and then if we had a public safety emergency of some sort, we could also utilize that same bank of that basic registration and that would go to everybody as well. But again, that would be something that we feel that you would be endangered if you didn't hear it.
SPEAKER_00:Gotcha, gotcha. So we talked a lot about emergency alerts. So we also have those optional community notifications, which really that's what peri alerts is for. Um so can you explain the difference between the emergency alerts and then those optional community notifications?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. So those emergency alerts, again, are just that they're emergency. We need to make sure everybody gets this information if you're in that affected area. So if you're outside of that area, you may not get it. And that's the beauty of this system. We can hone it to a specific area. So if it's a hazmat incident or something like that, we only need a neighborhood, we can isolate it. But the non-emergency side of it is just as important. And that's for people that want to know about community events, want to know about trash delays, want to know about water disruptions, you know, things that affect your daily life. Right. Um, or even just how well you you plug into the community, different events that you may want to attend or things like that. But having a common source for that data is so, so important because we don't want people having to look three and four and five different places to try to get that data, especially if it's something emergent. So they know if they see something coming from Houston Alerts or Perry Alerts system, it's coming from the same numbers every time. You know, it's gonna be the same three or four different numbers that that we hope everybody saves in their phone so they recognize it. Um, and it's even local numbers. We've got the system set up where it comes in from you know local local numbers. It's got emails attached to it that are familiar, local government emails. So you know it's a legitimate notification.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And that's another reason why the city of Perry approached y'all and was like, we would like to collaborate with y'all because you're right, having something sent from one central location is just a benefit to everybody. Absolutely. So the other really cool thing about Houston Alerts is that there's different delivery methods that are available, not just you know, push notifications or something like that. So tell me how the different notifications are done.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we can set it up and you can even go in and customize what methods you want to receive it in. But it's you know, generally in the system, it allows us to do cell phone calls, landline calls, text messages, and even inside of the text messages, we can incorporate an additional link to expand on whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:You know, so we don't hit you with five text messages at the same time. Right. Um you just click on the link and it pulls up a word document or a PDF or whatever it is that we're sending out. Um so you could even incorporate flyers into it, you know, or or if we're looking for a missing person, incorporate a picture, things like that. But we can do text, we can do the push notifications, you can do emails. Eventually we're gonna have computer-based alerting, so it'll pop up on your computer screens. That's more inter-government stuff, but we can do Alexa devices, things like that. So it's all incorporated in there. And it also, as we're building the system out, we can link it to Facebook and X or Twitter or whatever you want to call it nowadays. Right. Um whichever one it is, yeah. And you know, so we can link it to all those socials as well, so it would automatically go out and it's just one button push and it sends it to everything at one time. You know, whereas the old system, we would have to go through and select each one individually. And and with this one, we can pre-build the templates in it on our end so that it's much faster. We can just type what we want and it's already set up to hit those particular delivery methods.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I know specifically with like my personal profile that I have just for my home is, you know, depending on the alerts that I sign up for, I'll do, I just want a text message of if this particular alert comes through or I want a phone call, you know, such as like the weather alert. You know, I also want a phone call so it'll wake me up in the middle of the night or or something like that. So being very customizable, I really appreciate because that's you know, I'm able to get the information the way I want to get it.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, absolutely. And I will say we had a we had a little hiccup when we first got going. Um made a made a nice apologetic post on socials about it. Um we had the weather service, and again, that was they tie in automatically to the system and and we don't control when they push alerts out. And a lot of times they get busy during the day, so their overnight shift tends to send a lot of what we like to call not urgent. Right. But still important. It's still a message, but it's not really like life or death. Right. And they pushed a freeze alert out at 3 a.m. And the way we had the system set up for those uh what we categorize as emergency alerts, uh-huh. It it was automatically set up to go to phone, email, and text because it's important. You need to know it.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:But we've we learned very quickly that the weather service has overnight shift and they like to knock out a lot of a lot of things so the day shift doesn't have to do it.
SPEAKER_00:And uh but you know the good thing about that is it worked.
SPEAKER_02:It it absolutely worked. It worked. And we got a lot of feedback that it worked. Um so we we went into rectified that. So certain alerts on that end uh we we changed to just text and email.
SPEAKER_00:And it's technology. I mean, something's gotta, you know, screw up. And if it's gonna screw up, it's screwed up on a freeze alert. So, you know, it we just laugh about that, you know. But the the important thing is that it worked. So let's do talk about. So now that we got the kinks worked out and everything, so I know a lot of people are worried, well, are you gonna spam me, you know, with all these alerts, especially if it's you know, non-emergency or whatever. So, what exactly determines when an alert is issued? I think you talked a little bit about this earlier.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so if it's uh if it's something emergent, life-threatening, it it's going out 24 hours a day whenever it happens. If it if you're gonna be impacted, we want to make sure you know about it if it's emergent. If it's non-emergent, then it's we typically try to do that during normal business hours or within reason in the evening. Right. We're not gonna we're not gonna spam you at midnight with something that's happening a week from today. You know, those would be reserved for that true emergency that you know it's an inconvenience, but hey, we need to wake you up because you need to know about this.
SPEAKER_00:And I know at least on our you know, peri alert side, you know, I always tell people that the communications office, uh, you know, I was like, we don't have time to spam your phone. So if we send it, it's going to be during normal business hours as long as it's not emergency, you know. We don't have time to spam your phone. And I'm sure y'all feel the same way, you know.
SPEAKER_02:And I'll and I'll say that too, is you know, my my normal office hours are eight to five. Normal is the key word to that. Yeah. Um, you know, it could be I could be out at three o'clock in the morning, but I don't want to be out at three o'clock in the morning, so I don't want to be sending messages at three o'clock in the morning. So if if somebody sees something come from our system at three o'clock in the morning, they know it's it's important. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:So let's go over to privacy and trust. So people often worry about privacy. So, how is resident information protected within the Houston Alert system?
SPEAKER_02:So it is isolated to just our system. Whenever they register, they have to register through RAVE, which is part of Smart 911, is is part of that. That is the only information that is really shared, and that is shared only internally through a link directly to the 911 Center. Okay, okay. Other than that, is everything is isolated into our system, and Rave Motorola can't even look at it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_02:So it is they they told us that from the very beginning. Look, look, this is your information, your data. You know, if you have or need need assistance with it, we can help you through the process, but we can't pull that individual data for you. So it's it's very secured in that system, it's not going anywhere. And we typically don't ask for anything that's really important to your life anyway. We're gonna ask, you know, email, phone, and on the smart 911 side, you know, how many pets do you have, things that you would like the 911 center to know or emergency responders to know. Right. So it's it's just information you're freely sharing at that point, just so that we can better respond to whatever's going on at at your home. But it's it's isolated. So again, that's you know, the only thing that goes is to the 911 system, and that's an automatic, and they can't even go in and pull it on the back end. Gotcha. If you call, it's displayed. Gotcha. So it has to be associated with that number and things like that.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm glad you mentioned that because when you do create a profile, you know, we talk about you know, doing your alerts and figuring out, you know, what you want to receive, but there's also a lot of information in there, like you said, that you can freely give, such as like emergency contacts or pets or or things like that. So really, you know, if there's an emergency or you need to call 911 for something like that, they can, you know, that information is available to them.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And that's you know, that that was just an added component to us going to this system is it is it incorporates automatically like that. But it's again, it's freely shared information. Right, right. It's nothing that we've got that little asterisk by that says you have to complete this, otherwise you can't sign up.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:You know, to sign up, really all you need is an email and a phone number associated with it. But we ask you to put address and other information in so that it does help build that 911 data. Right. And if an emergency should ever happen, God forbid, the emergency responders will have that information and or the dispatchers will have it and be able to relay that to us in the field so that we can better serve you and protect you.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Exactly. So let's talk about how to sign up and what to do next. So, what's the easiest way for someone to sign up today?
SPEAKER_02:So there's a lot of different mechanisms. One, they can go back and check some of the pinned posts on our socials that have the links in it. Perry also has those. You can go to the houstoncountyga.gov website and sign up for alerts.
SPEAKER_00:And that's right there on the homepage. There's a nice little button.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, it's right there. As soon as you soon as you pull the screen up, especially if you pull it up on mobile, it is one of the first things that you see. They can go through that or they can go through the Perry website as well. So, you know, there's there's a lot of different options. It all takes you back to the same link. The same link. But there's there's multiple places to get that link.
SPEAKER_00:Perfect. And let's just reiterate too. So if someone was previously enrolled in Code Red years ago, what steps do they need to take now?
SPEAKER_02:They need to go to one of those links. If they go to one of those links, it'll step them through the process and they create a smart 911 account, or it does it simultaneously. So they'll set up an account with RAVE and it also sets up that Smart 911. Perfect. And then once they go through that, just get the initial, hey, this is my username, password screen done. Then it'll ask them for a verification on the email. They can select each group of messages that they want to receive. So there's you know, 10 or 10 or 12 options in there right now, or maybe 15 options in there. Right. Um and it's we did that to break it apart. Sure. You know, so that people can really truly customize what they want to receive.
SPEAKER_00:So um how often do you recommend that residents review or update their alert preferences?
SPEAKER_02:Is is there a I mean I would say, you know, anytime they have something change in their life, or at least every year, uh especially the Smart 911 side of it. Sure. Or if if they want to check and see what new messages, message groups are out there. We're creating new message groups all the time for different specific community needs. So, you know, randomly log back into Smart 911 and check your alert settings and you'll see all of those groups pop up. And maybe you know, you were part of a group that, hey, uh this really isn't for me. Sure. You can uncheck that box without having to unsign up for the entire system. So you can customize from now until you know whenever we're done with this system, right? Or something, something, another major upgrade happens, uh, which we don't foresee for you know the near future anyway, but they can go in and and customize those from now until whenever. Wonderful.
SPEAKER_00:So what would you say to someone? Because I know some some people may be saying, you know, alerts, you know, what why would I need them? I've I've lived here forever and I've been just fine. What would you say to them?
SPEAKER_02:You've been just fine, is the key word in that is been. You know, you never know what's gonna happen or when it's gonna happen or who it's gonna happen to. We have a a large transient area here, we've got major highways, we've got interstates, sure. Just a growing community in general. So you never know what's gonna happen. And the other side of that is everybody says, Well, I've got all these weather apps that alert me. And things like, well, guess what? A lot of those weather apps do a generic area, they're not specific to your area. Um, it may be an entire county that they're looking at and say, Oh, well, you live in Centerville or you live in Henderson. Well, if a tornado comes through Henderson, but you live in Centerville, do you really want to wake up at 3 a.m. in fear that there's a tornado about to hit your house? Great point. So don't you know, those apps are great, but they need to rely on specific pinpointed data. And that's what this system will deliver is it will let you know if you get a tornado alert warning for your address, you are inside of that polygon that the weather service has issued. Right. It's exactly the same for any other emergency alert that we send out, is it's pinpointed based on your area. Water outages, boil water advisories. You know, that's something that we really hadn't had a big issue with until the last couple years. We've had a couple of those go out, and it's because of all of the growth and changes and and infrastructure improvements that are going on, and things happen. So you know, you need to know that hey, your house is inside of this boil water advisory, you need to boil your water before you drink it. You know, versus if you just had some other generic app, you're not gonna get that notification. Yep. Or if you don't watch the news every evening, you're not gonna get that notification. So having this system is just a safety blanket of knowing that you're gonna get notified if there's something significant that's gonna impact you.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So let's wrap this up. So we talked about, you know, going to the socials for the House and County Emergency Management Agency. We'll have those in the show notes, those links as well to the website. So if somebody has a question or needs help registering, what do you suggest they do?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, they can they can go through the the help links and stuff on the page. If that doesn't work, call our office. We'll be more than happy to to walk you through it. We've helped probably a hundred people sign up for this system. And and once we step them through a few things, they're like, oh, this is really easy. I just thought it was gonna be more difficult. So they they went ahead and called, which is fine. We you know, we're here to help people and we want to make sure everybody gets signed up for this. So 478 542 2026 is our main EMA number, which conveniently is also one of the numbers that's gonna get shown up on your caller ID when you register for this system. You know, there's there's a few different numbers it uses, but that's one of them. And that's we did that because that's our main. Main government, you know, phone number to that office. Right. But that'll also get you to our office staff who will be able to turn around and log in and help you through that process.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, wonderful. And we'll also include that in those show notes as well. So, Chief Sonar, thank you so much for being a guest here on the Inside Perry Podcast. And we look forward to more collaboration with y'all.
SPEAKER_02:Outstanding. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to the Inside Perry Podcast, your inside look at Perry's local government. Take a look at the show notes for more information about today's episode. If you like Inside Perry, we encourage you to subscribe and share the podcast with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you around in our amazing community where Georgia comes together.