Blacksburg is preparing to launch a system that will alert residents of emergencies - or late water bills - via fax, e-mail, telephone or pager.

By TOM ANGLEBERGER
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Blacksburg, Virginia - If only Paul Revere had the homeland security system that Blacksburg is getting.

Type in "The British are coming" and this prototype computer gets it to whoever needs it most - by pager, by e-mail, by PDA, by instant messenger, by fax, by TDD, even by phone, using a voice synthesizer.

Potentially, every resident of the town could be on the computer's list, along with their preferred means of contact. Every town agency and emergency service would be hooked in, too, of course.

That's handy if there's a water main break, but potentially life-saving in the case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. And between emergencies, you may be able to use it to pay your parking tickets by phone or computer.

"It's just so amazing with the possibilities," said Heather Browning, Blacksburg's public information officer. "It's going to be a tremendous tool for us."

"All this technology already exists. It's the planning process that's the different part," said Joan Nelson, chief executive of Tele-Works, the Blacksburg company that developed the system, called FirstResponder.

FirstResponder is a prototype that could be used by cities, towns and counties across the country - and, in the big picture, by state and federal governments to tie together all those cities, towns and counties.

Currently, in the event of an emergency, a local government must burn a lot of crucial time on the phone.

Call the police, call the rescue squad, call the mayor, call the town manager and on and on. It's better than Revere's "one if by land, two if by sea," but Tele-Works has something more 21st-century in mind.

FirstResponder, which runs on a Pentium 4 computer custom-built by Christiansburg's Comprehensive Computer Solutions, does all the calling, faxing and messaging itself. A town official would type a single message and choose who to send it to, and the computer does the rest.

Say there is a bio-terrorism threat at a certain business. With just one message, First Responder could notify all fire and rescue personnel, residents of nearby houses, the media and the county health department.

In the event of a wide-scale threat, it wouldn't be feasible to call every resident - there simply aren't enough telephone lines. Instead, FirstResponder might notify certain people in the community, possibly a group such as the Ruritans, who could then take to the streets to spread the message, Paul Revere-style.

Another use for the product, and a much more likely scenario, would be a message to every resident with a delinquent water bill.

"Instead of people calling us ... we can push out information," said Steve Jones, Blacksburg's technology director.

Over the last 16 years, Tele-Works has created systems that work on similar principles for nearly 200 governments across the country. Mostly, these systems have focused on making government more accessible to citizens through phone lines and Web sites.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks added extra urgency and potentially more profitability to their efforts to make the information flow the other way - to make citizens more accessible to the government.

An entry-level system for a small community costs between $40,000 and $50,000, according to Nelson. The price of the Blacksburg system is not yet known, but Nelson said the town will get a discount because FirstResponder is still a prototype.

Two years ago, FirstResponder might have seemed like a luxury. Soon, however, local governments might be able to get funds to buy FirstResponder or other civic security products through homeland security grants from the federal government.

"It seems serendipitous," said Tele-Works president Chris Schellhammer, "but we were on track to do this."

Tele-Works and Blacksburg hope to launch FirstResponder early in 2003. One of the town's first challenges will be to get residents to opt-in to the program by supplying their contact information.

Tom Angleberger: 381-1663, tom.angleberger@roanoke.com.