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Recently our coop had a gas leak that required the fire dept to air out the building for about 2 hrs. A shareholder was not home and somehow their stove dial was turned on. The porter smelled heavy gas and it was so much that it could have exploded if someone sparked electricity. Anyway, our coop has no emergency notification system in place. No tenants were notified and the only way to find out was to go outside and ask someone. A couple weeks ago, during the big snowstorm the building also lost heat/hot water and the elevator broke down at the same time. Again, no way for any tenants to know other than a paper notice posted on the elevator.
Is this normal? Aren't emergency notification systems pretty inexpensive and considered a must for liability for a coop these days? How do you get your board to address this issue? At the very least, the management could make a group text on their own from the super. Is that too much to ask?
Thanks Samuel, unfortunately our coop just replaced the intercom system last year. Not sure what company it is but it rings to our cell phones now. Clearly no notifications included.
This should be up to your board and your managing agent, it is up to them to address any problems in the building. Such as water shut offs elevators shut down and have all residence emergency numbers and set up an e-mail notification linked to all shareholders. etc.
This gas was your neighbors fault and your building staff should have had a key to everyones apt. or spare key given to a trusted neighbor. Send an e-mail to your managing agent and your board addressing your concerns and ideas for a future emergency. Good Luck
We use a commercial email distribution service called Mailchimp. Depending on the size of your mailing list, the very basic service will probably be free. It can satisfy all the situations you described above except for real-time notification of a gas leak, and hopefully, you won't have too many of those.
Mailchimp is a robust service and does have a bit of a learning curve, so you might check if any of your shareholders have experience using it.
You should look into the onecallnow.com system. Low cost and always dependable.
For these types of quick communication, I'd set up a building-wide google group to allow for an email to be sent out to everyone at once.
If residents don't have access to email, I'd use a text service, such as Textline, to get out texts from the company or Board.
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The product besides being the most advanced intercom system on the market, also has a built in resident notification system. Can send out emergency notifications to everyone in seconds, from anywhere.
www.MVIsystems.com
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