Emergency Preparedness

All residents and businesses in Frederick should be prepared for large-scale emergencies or disasters such as tornadoes, aircraft crashes, explosions, hazardous materials accidents, and other incidents.

Emergency Event Notifications

The Town of Frederick and The Carbon Valley Emergency Management Agency wants the community to know that being prepared is the best way to be resilient. Weld County and the Carbon Valley emergency response agencies have teamed up to provide Emergency Notification for emergency events that may affect you and your families such as police activity in your neighborhood, tornado warnings, severe weather events, and more.

CodeRED Emergency NotificationsCode RED FF

Residents should sign up for CodeRED emergency alerts to receive notifications for emergency events. These events may affect you and your families, such as police activity in your neighborhood and severe weather alerts. Other examples include evacuation notices, bio-terrorism alerts, boil water notices, and missing child reports. Weld County has contracted with CodeRed for a high-speed emergency notification system to alert county residents of emergencies. Signing up for CodeRed is free and easy, and you can have emergency notifications sent via phone call, text message, or email. Registered residents and businesses will receive notifications if their registered address is within the direct path of severe weather projected by the National Weather Service. You are encouraged to create a user profile and make sure your information is current.

Benefits of CodeRED:

  • CodeRED offers emergency alerts by text, phone call, and email.
  • The alerts come through like an Amber Alert and make noise even if the phone is silent or vibrating. Choose these options on CodeRED when you sign up for alerts.
  • CodeRED is through Weld County and includes weather alerts and other emergency information traffic, power outages, etc.

More resources for emergency weather alert notification:

Outdoor Sirens - A Thing of the Past

In 2013, the Town Board of Trustees for Frederick and Firestone chose to deactivate local tornado warning sirens. In a report to the Towns, the Frederick-Firestone Fire District said approximately ten additional sirens were needed to cover the entire jurisdiction effectively. Initial costs would have run $15,000 to $20,000 a siren, not including land-use agreements, power to the site, and ongoing maintenance. To update the sirens in 2013, it would have cost the Towns upwards of $250,000, with annual costs exceeding $30,000.

The downsides of the siren:

  • The sirens cannot provide specific information on weather conditions and what you need to do to prepare. 
  • Sirens are not designed to be heard indoors or in vehicles. 
  • Siren sounds produce curiosity, pulling people outdoors, resulting in the opposite effect of their design and function. 
  • The audible range of the siren is impacted by typography, such as trees, buildings, wind, and ambient noises. These are all present in severe weather, making the sirens even more ineffective. 

In the past, the public relied heavily on outdoor sirens for severe weather warning. These devices gave very little warning of approaching severe weather. They could only be heard within a very small outdoor area, which brought people out of safety to hear them. Sirens are not capable of providing specific information on weather conditions and what you should do to prepare. They are not designed to be heard indoors or in your vehicle and are no longer in use in Frederick. We'd like residents to sign up for CodeRED as it is a much more effective way to get the most up to date information.