Grace Dunklin, Campus Carrier Staff Reporter
Berry students and employees receive local weather and threat alerts through the Berry Alert system, but some also receive additional America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) Alerts via the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) program and through their email.
The AMBER acronym is also a tribute to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996 when she went out riding her bike near her grandparents’ home in Arlington, TX. The system itself began in 1996, with an early warning system created by Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters and police, according to the AMBER Alert FAQ sheet.
The WEA program allows people who have certain phone models to automatically receive text-like messages detailing certain emergency situations. According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) website, these messages are location-specific and use a special kind of technology to bypass the wireless and texting systems.
According to the AMBER Alerts website, “If you have a WEA-enabled phone, you are automatically enrolled for the three alerts: President, Imminent Threat and AMBER Alerts.”
President and Imminent Threat alerts are more related to personal safety than AMBER alerts are. Presidential alerts are issued by the President or someone designated by the President. Imminent Threat alerts are issued when there is a significant natural or man-made disaster that offers significant peril to the people in the area being alerted.
AMBER Alerts were added to this system in January 2013, due to the CTIA the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
According to the AMBER Alerts website, “AMBER Alerts are issued for abducted children when the situation meets the AMBER Alert criteria.”
The criteria were created by the Department of Justice and follow a few simple guidelines. Law enforcement must confirm that there was an abduction, the child must be at risk of injury or death, there must be a description of the child or the child’s captor good enough to give out an alert and the child must be 17 or younger.
Berry police are trained to respond to and deal with situations stemming from AMBER Alerts.
“Our department has trained with local law enforcement/emergency agencies throughout Floyd County and are part of its Certified Child Abduction Response Team. We received this certification in October 2011,” Berry Chief of Police Bobby Abrams said.
Abrams also gets the alerts on his personal phone, and said that the statistics prove that AMBER Alerts are very effective.
According to the AMBER Alerts website, 641 children have been saved directly as a result of the program. The numbers each year have increased as the program has expanded. In 2001, only two children were saved because of the program, but five years later, in 2006, 69 children had been rescued.
Juniors Chelsea Lemcke and Dexter Thomas agreed that the program is helpful and effective.
Lemcke said she receives AMBER alerts via her email all the time.
“I hear stories all the time. There was one on the news several years ago of someone who recognized a girl who had been kidnapped five years previously. They had used computer aging on her picture, and someone saw her and reported it, and she was reunited with her family. It was such a powerful story that I guess it stuck with me,” Lemcke said.
While Thomas agreed that the system is useful, he expressed some concern about the size of the alert regions.
“I wish they would limit the alerts received depending on where you live. Someone living in Northern Georgia likely won’t be of much use looking for a child in Florida,” he said.
While only select phone models can have the WEA program, a list of carriers and sub-lists of compatible phone models can be found on the CTIA website, http://www.ctia.org. People can also find more information about AMBER Alerts and how to be involved at http://www.amberalert.gov.