Over the last several months, officials from Bartholomew County and the City of Columbus have been working with Everbridge to fix the recurring issue of multiple alerts going out in regards to weather related incidents. Bartholomew County Emergency Management is happy to announce that the issue has been resolved and the fix verified through a handful of weather alerts, such as watches or warnings, since the end of May.
The duplication had been seen periodically with weather alerts through the system since last summer and officials had been working with Everbridge to resolve the issues since then. Last fall it was believed the system was fixed only to have the issue occur again at the first of the year. In the spring, the issue was escalated through Everbridge support and determined that the contractor used to enter the weather information into the Everbridge system from the National Weather Service was entering duplicate information. As a result, multiple alerts were being issued for the same event. Since the alerts were separate, if a user did not acknowledge both messages, the system would continue the secondary means of delivery further adding to the messages received by users.
With the system fixed, it’s still important for users to understand that what appears to be multiple messages could be received when it comes to Flood Watches and Warnings. This is due to the multiple rivers that run through Columbus and Bartholomew County. The National Weather Service issues individual alerts for each river. Officials have researched ways to help reduce the number of alerts users may receive when it comes to flooding but have not found a viable solution at this point due to the close proximity of the rivers in some areas.
To determine which alerts you are signed up to receive and how, you may visit either website above or email alerts@bartholomew.in.gov or call 812-379-1500.
