Tax Dollars at Work

Is it just me? When the phone rings after midnight at our house, it's bad news. Nobody calls us at 12:45 am with good news, or just to ask, "S'up?"

When the phone rings at almost one in the morning, my wife Connie wakes up in a panic, her heart pounding, hoping our daughter Debbie is alive. In our family, the wee hours are for births and deaths, and nobody we know is expecting.

It's almost 1 am right now, and the phone just rang. I picked it up to hear an eerie, computer-generated voice. Surely I didn't have an overdue book? Surely the library wouldn't call at one in the morning? Surely the doctor or mechanic wouldn't call at one in the morning to confirm an upcoming appointment. Surely nobody with any sense or decency would call at one in the morning if it wasn't life and death.

As the computer voice introduced itself, Connie is watching and waiting with anxious, sleepy eyes, fearing the worst, wondering what emergency woke us on a work night.

Slowly, with less than state-of-the-art speech synthesis, the voice explained that the Sheriff's Office was issuing an alert that the supply of water to the Deschutes River was going to be shut off to recover the body of a man who drowned on Sunday (ignore the incorrect headline).

The phone just rang again, with the same message, after one in the morning. I appreciate all the services the Sheriff's Office provides, and it's re-assuring to know there's an automated system to warn us in the event of an emergency. If there was a wildfire headed this way, or the river was flooding, or a volcano erupting (again), getting a phone call would be vital. But I have a few questions...

1. Couldn't they have phoned us earlier with this information, or delay the water cutoff, instead of calling at o'dark hundred?

2. Couldn't they have a human record the message so that sleepy homeowners could more easily understand it?

3. Did they have to wake us twice?

4. If this event is so important, why is there no apparent description of it on the sheriff's web page? Why no link to it in the phone message?

My thanks to the sheriff's department for all they do, but I wish they'd re-evaluate how they operate the alert system.

My condolences to the man's family.


Posted by Dave    Blog Tag: Opinion