Alert system proves effective after prisoner escape

Later that day, police shot and killed Poke during an exchange of gunfire at the Washington National Cemetery in Suitland. Poke was serving a life sentence plus 40 years for kidnapping, robbery and carjacking.

‘‘Prior to WARN, we had to rely on media outlets and so forth” to tell residents and businesses of a crisis, said Vernon Herron, the county’s homeland security director. ‘‘With WARN, in a matter of seven minutes we dialed 35,000 phone numbers. It’s really a helpful tool for ... manmade and natural disasters.”

Herron said the Prince George’s Office of Homeland Security has a million listed and unlisted landline phone numbers in the WARN system, which was installed in 2002.

‘‘We sent a recorded message saying that a state prisoner had escaped from the Laurel Regional Hospital, then gave a description and told them to call us if they had any information,”he said.

Another phone alert was sent out after Poke was caught. Residents and businesses do not have to sign up for WARN, Herron said. If they have a landline in the affected area, they will receive a call.

Herron said the phone system, whose list is updated semi-annually, works well but has one major caveat — people with caller-identification systems on their home phones may believe the number that comes up when WARN calls is the number of a solicitor and not answer.

This is the second time that WARN, which is also used by the federal Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been used in the county.

On the first occasion a year ago, an inmate being transported escaped custody in Largo, Herron said.

He said the decision to set up the system was made after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

‘‘In light of our nation’s homeland security concerns, we needed a way to notify residents if there [was] an emergency,” Herron said.

The city of Laurel has its own phone-notification system, called CodeRED, that was also used on Jan. 2. Using the secure Web site of the company that manufactures the system, Emergency Communications Network, Inc, city administrators record a message, highlight on a map the area to which they want the message to go and then click a button to send it.About 10,500 Laurel residents in approximately 10 to 15 minutes were alerted by CodeRED Jan. 2, said Kevin Frost, the city’s director of information technology and community services. This meant that some residents got two different recorded messages telling them of the Poke incident.

Though CodeRED and WARN do not work together in any way, Herron said the county Department of Homeland Security encourages an added measure of security.

‘‘Some people did not get called,” Frost said. ‘‘We’re trying to figure out why ... and how to tweak the system.”

Nearby Deerfield Run and Bond Mill elementary schools both received updates on the hospital incident from their regional offices.

‘‘I got an e-mail from a parent who had received one of those [WARN] phone calls saying this was going on,” said Bond Mill Elementary Principal Justin FitzGerald, who got phone updates from the county schools’ Region 5 office after hearing from the parent.

‘‘Our regional office e-mailed us all day regarding the status [of the incident],” said Deerfield Run secretary Carol Keitel.

Herron said the Prince George’s Office of Homeland Security is attempting to learn why some schools did not receive a WARN message.

‘‘When there’s a crisis situation around one of our schools, the county [school system] calls the schools directly,” said Tanzi West, public information officer for Prince George’s County Public Schools.

She added that on the morning of Jan. 2, area schools were ‘‘notified immediately” of the Poke incident.

PNC Bank on Van Dusen Road, which closed to walk-in customers on Jan. 2 but kept its drive-through service open, did get a call from the WARN system.

‘‘[But] we’re literally across the street from the hospital, so we knew about it before we got the call because of the police [presence] and all the road closings,” Van Dusen branch manager L.J. Humphrey said.