Some Anniston and area residents last week found packages on their doorsteps that may help save their lives down the road.

Employees of Warning Systems Inc. began distributing 45,000 emergency alert radios for the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency. Those follow the 108,000 radios distributed last year to surrounding counties, EMA director Dan Long said.

The radios are pre-programmed to broadcast local emergency alerts, including weather updates. The agency got a chance to test the system out during last week’s cold snap.

“One of the biggest (differences between these and emergency radios given out in the past) is that we can activate alerts for the county itself,” Long said. “(On Jan. 7), we activated them through civil service activation … to alert the public to hazardous roads.”

Residents and businesses receiving the free radios in this second phase of distribution include Alexandria, Bynum, Oxford, downtown Weaver and Anniston, Long said.

“In phase one, we had to mail out documents to get residents’ addresses, and we mailed them out,” he said. “In phase two, we’re programming them before sending them out and delivering them with no writeins or mail-outs.”
This phase of distribution is expected to last about three months, Long said, and save the federal government $4 million.

He could not provide the cost of the project, but said that each radio’s retail price is about $30. Attempts to contact project coordinator Steve Swafford were unsuccessful.

Funding for the radios is provided through the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program, which supplies federal money for protective measures in case of an accident at the Anniston Army Depot’s chemical weapons incinerator. The radios can also alert residents of such an accident, though Mike Abrams, a spokesman for the Army’s local incineration project, said that seven years after the program began, the risk is nearly gone.

“From a statistical point of view, we have now safely processed more than 67 percent of the Anniston stockpile,” he said. “With that, we have safely disposed of all of the nerve agent munitions, most importantly the rockets. It”
CSEPP funding will cease in 2012, when the incinerator is scheduled to be finished with processing weapons. That deadline is set by an international treaty concerning chemical weapons.

Long said the EMA wanted to leave something with the community once the CSEPP funding is gone.

“CSEPP has been here for 20 years, and these radios we’re using for that particular program,” he said.

“When CSEPP goes away, that system goes away too, but we wanted to leave citizens with a radio that can meet the needs of the weather, because that’s one of the key issues we have to worry about in this area after the funding is gone.”

Unlike previous radio distributions, in which CSEPP paid for free replacement radios, Long said there will be no replacements for these.

“These are one-time, free-to-you and yours to keep. After this, if you have to replace it, you’ll have to pay for it yourself,” he said.

For more information on the EMA’s radio distribution, call 256-435-0540, or visit http:// earready.us.