The Lorain County Commissioners approved a $37,231.58 service agreement with OnSolve LLC, CodeRED’s parent company, at its Feb. 28 board meeting. This decision follows numerous concerns about the reliability of the Wireless Emergency Notification System (WENS) raised by Dave Freeman, director of the Lorain County Emergency Management Agency (EMA).
Freeman described significant notification delays during the meeting, citing a recent incident during which a sheriff’s road emergency alert took 3.5 hours to distribute and required executive-level intervention.
“Whenever I do a countywide alert, it spins and never sends out the message,” Freeman said. “So, not really what we’re looking for in an emergency alert.”
The issue arose as Freeman was preparing to renew the county’s WENS contract after being assured previous problems had been fixed. Instead, he removed the renewal from an upcoming agenda to explore alternatives.
Of the five potential providers that were vetted, Freeman noted that CodeRED emerged as both the most affordable full-service solution and a highly regarded choice. The new system will be capable of reaching residents through six different channels, including voice calls, text messages and social media. Alerts will be distributed more efficiently, following a six-step process that takes less than one minute to complete.
CodeRED will also migrate and clean the current database, eliminating duplicate entries—a significant problem under WENS. Despite having 113,000 registered Lorain County users, Freeman estimates more than half are duplicates.
“We had people complaining because they were receiving 12, 14, 20 alerts. What I found out through that was that the people receiving those multiple alerts had signed up 12 or 14 times without realizing it,” Freeman said. “I have a problem with that because if I try to sign up at Meijer and enter my email address, they’re going to say ‘you already have an account.’ WENS was not doing that, so it was really causing us a lot of problems.”
The CodeRED system will cost the county about $34,000 annually after a first-year $2,500 setup fee—less than the $36,350 previously paid to WENS, which recently increased the cost to $42,000.
Current WENS subscribers will be automatically transferred to CodeRED. New users will be able to sign up for the service through a registration link that will be posted on the Lorain County website and shared with all local jurisdictions.
Residents will have the option to customize their alert preferences, including notifications for local emergencies and National Weather Service alerts. The system will also incorporate an integrated public awareness warning system through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Similar to Amber alerts, the system will use geofencing technology to send notifications to every cell phone in the county during major disasters.
The new alert system will remain free for all county residents, while providing a more reliable and user-friendly means of communication in the event of an emergency, according to Freeman. The exact timeline for CodeRED’s rollout is still being finalized, but county officials have already begun the transition process.
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