By Denise Linke
The Chicago Tribune

SUGAR GROVE, Ill. — When storms hit the area on Aug. 4, Kane County emergency officials wanted residents who lost power to be aware of a shelter that was set up in Sugar Grove. Using the county's Code Red system, 895 calls were sent out in three minutes.

Now the county wants to improve the system by reaching out to the 150,000 or so residents who are unreachable by the reverse 911 system.

Kane County towns and school districts are helping to enroll every county resident in the Office of Emergency Management's Code Red phone alert system, County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay said Tuesday at a news conference in Batavia.

The system sends updates and instructions by recorded phone messages to residents affected by local crises. It has been used several times since it went online a year ago, said OEM Director Don Bryant.

It was most recently used for the Sugar Grove shelter.

"A lot of people used the shelter after hearing about it from us," Bryant said. "It's a very efficient system ... and we can fine-tune it to call only people who live on one side of a single street. We want people without land lines in the database so they will benefit from these calls too."

The Code Red database now holds only listed residential land line phone numbers, excluding residents whose phone numbers are unlisted or who use only cell phone or Internet phone service. "Clearly that is insufficient. We need to make this available to all our residents," McConnaughay said.

Residents can add their names, addresses and phone numbers to the database by visiting the county's Web site ( www.countyofkane.org) and clicking the Code Red link on the right side of the screen to access the online form.

Residents also can mail in a form that will be distributed to students and municipal utility customers and will be available at libraries and other public places.

Family and caregivers of disabled or elderly county residents can list their phone numbers under the residents' addresses to get emergency messages, even if the caregivers don't live in Kane County.

The contact information in the database will be used only to contact residents during emergencies, said Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke, who attended the news conference at Batavia's east side fire station.

"This information will be kept private. We're not sharing it with other folks," he said.

"This is a very important step in the life of the county. It can make a big difference in how we handle tornadoes, chemical spills and other disasters."