KINGWOOD — Preston County’s Wireless Emergency Notification System (WENS) is something of a success story.
That’s what Duane Hamilton, Director of the Preston County Office of Emergency Management and 911 told the Preston County Commission at its regular meeting Wednesday.
Hamilton explained that Public Service Districts and water systems have until January to have an emergency notification system in place and said their phones have been ringing off the hook with utilities looking to join WENS, which the county purchased several years ago.
Some utilities, such as Alpine Lake Public Utilities Company, are already signed up, Hamilton said.
General Manager Kim Mayne said the company went live with the system to alert customers to problems such as boil water advisories, or water outages in February 2019. She said they were also able to attend training on the program through OEM/911.
Mayne said officials from 911 reached out to the utility after purchasing WENS and said there was room in the system for utilities and municipalities to piggyback on the system.
While the system — which is customizable even down to the street level — isn’t needed often, Mayne said it’s really helped reach their customers through a text or email when there is a problem no matter where a customer might be.
Joining the system is voluntary but the utility works through homeowners associations and encourages new customers to sign up for the alerts, Mayne said.
Hamilton said joining the WENS system saves the utilities money and because the system was bought for the county, it can be used by anyone in the county.
Mayne said to date the utility has never been charged to use the system.
WENS was used by PSD 1 in November 2020 to alert customers they may be without water because of a water main break on Kingwood Pike, according to its Facebook page.
Hamilton said there is a meeting on Dec. 1 to set up PSD 4, which covers the Bruceton Mills area.
There is a link to sign up for OEM/911 WENS system on preston911.com. Users can choose to receive alerts based on the area they live or based on disaster type such as high wind warnings or flash flood warnings. Alerts can be sent 24/7 or from 6 a.m.-11 p.m.
Neither Preston County nor its vendor sells customer data, according to the sign up page.
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