It came upon a post-midnight clear, that incessant ringing in my ear. At about 4 a.m. one morning, a few months back, I woke to the sound of my home phone ringing away. It interrupted my sleep, but with kids away in college and overseas, and an elderly parent living in Florida, I felt it was one of those horror calls about an accident or an illness. At that hour of the morning, all the evil things come to mind that you can do nothing about except absorb the report.
But guess what, it wasn’t. Instead, it was the City of Colonial Heights, which in its infinite wisdom felt I needed to be awakened and warned about a thunderstorm. I really didn’t need a warning about the thunder storm; I have been through hundreds of them. Actually, I have slept through hundreds of them, but after the call, I found I couldn’t get back to sleep and just as I felt myself starting to drift off, KABOOM the first salvo of thunder rattled the walls. So, I guess it was nice of the city to wake me up so I wouldn’t be able to sleep when the storm actually hit 20 minutes later.
I really don’t understand why the city thinks this warning system is a good idea in the first place. Perhaps some people appreciate being called at all hours of the day or night, but not me. Take me off the list. In my mind, this is worse than an advertising call or a prank caller. At least with them I am afforded the opportunity to harass them. With the city, all you get is some pre-recorded message and advisement to take cover. If I am in my house answering the phone, what better cover could I have?
Sorry, but I was under cover before you woke me up. And, you know what, it turns out that that storm was not much different than any of the other storms I lived through in my nearly 5x years.
Whose grand idea do you think this was?
I can just imagine some city staffer being approached about early warning systems to save the people of Colonial Heights from potential dangerous storms. So many residents have been killed in the past by lightning strikes and trees falling, you know. Jeepers, too bad they didn’t have this device in place during the war of Northern Aggression. Who knows, it might have taken US Grant an extra couple months to break through the lines at Petersburg had Gen. Robert E. Lee been able to rouse his troops in advance. So much for technology, anyway.
Now, I am not going to say that I don’t appreciate some of the things that the City does in the name of serving the citizenry. The parks are nice, they are trying their best to spruce them up. I like the trash pickup and the recycling is my wife’s favorite thing all time. But this particular service, to me, is more than a waste of time and money, it’s an outright nuisance.
Now I am learning that the city has decided the original version wasn’t good enough. Now they are going to use a new system called CodeRED Emergency Notification System, and that will start on August 1, as if the former system wasn’t enough of an annoyance. So, they will be testing this system out on July 18 by making a “test” emergency call to everyone in the city.
The intent is to give city personnel a chance to operate the system before it is put into action a few weeks later. Oh boy, just what I wanted!
Not only that, but the city isn’t satisfied with just having my home phone number. No, they want me to go to their website and add in all kinds of other numbers and contact methods so that they can annoy me in oh so many ways.
Really, I appreciate the thought behind what you are trying to do. But sometimes I don’t want you insinuating yourself into my daily life. The best thing about thunderstorms, twisters, hurricanes, and heavy snow is that it’s random. There are numerous ways in which news of big weather or emergency events get out. Listen to the radio, they will make that annoying bleeping sound and interrupt that with even more exciting news about the coming foul weather. Or you can just turn on the TV and watch the ticker tape streaming across the bottom third of the screen. What’s even better is when one of the talking head weather people break into the show you’re watching in order to tell you that a storm is in Dinwiddie and heading to the Tri Cities. Wow, exciting big news. What did we do before we had that kind of coverage, look at the sky?
I suppose there are people in the community who don’t think these things are a colossal waste of money, and there are probably people who are grateful for those early morning calls. But they aren’t me. As far as I am concerned, this isn’t some public service it’s a waste of public finances. Keep the money spent on this system and use it for something more important, like a memorial for City Councilors who have outstayed their usefulness.
No comments:
Post a Comment