Pierce County is organizing a public safety work group to develop guidelines on the use of the telephone emergency notification system that quickly delivers messages to thousands of residents.

The Department of Emergency Management is leading the effort in response to feedback received as a result of the search for a missing man in Lakewood recently. At the request of Lakewood police, the county used its Intrado Target Notification System to call about 11,000 homes with a recorded message in an attempt to locate the man, who has serious medical and mental issues and went missing from his health care facility. The calls went out around 11:30 p.m. on a Thursday and the man was found early Friday.

“We have used this tool several hundred times over the last several years, to warn citizens about floods, hazardous material releases, missing children and medically fragile adults. And we have had great results,” said Steve Bailey, director of the Department of Emergency Management. “However, given the recent events, it is prudent and timely that we sit down with representatives of our police and fire departments and our E-911 call centers and agree on some general principals of how and when the system will be used.”

The Target Notification Software enables emergency notification of residents within prescribed areas determined by incident commanders. The software accesses the 911 database to reach every household in a “reverse 911” emergency notification. The area may be as isolated as a neighborhood or as large as a city.

The new work group also will be charged with developing approaches to educate Pierce County residents on how this important emergency information notification system works.