During the recent butane spill on Highway 89 in Fruit Heights, an automated emergency notification system was used to inform local residents of the need to evacuate.

The system, known commercially as CityWatch, had been used a few times for small scale issues since it was put into place in May 2004, but the Feb. 9 incident was the first large-scale use of the system.

And county officials are pleased with the results. The system was used shortly after the tanker spill to inform South Weber residents when a road was closed after a mudslide.

According to Don Denman, vice president of the Minneapolis-based Avtex, Inc., the company that developed CityWatch in 1993, business has increased more than 40 percent since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Hundreds of municipalities across the country, along with law enforcement and public health agencies, now use the system because it can contact thousands of people per hour.

Davis County Health Department director Lewis Garrett explains where the funding for such a system originated.

"After the anthrax attacks in late 2001, the federal government began an aggressive funding effort to strengthen state and local public health departments to respond to natural or manmade public health threats," he said.

One way to accomplish this was to invest in a communication system that would allow local officials to directly notify the public of health and safety hazards.

The CityWatch system is now available throughout the state of Utah.

With the tanker truck fire in Fruit Heights, the system worked like this: officials decided which areas needed to be evacuated, then Law recorded a 30-second message.

The message, in turn, was automatically sent to every number within the mapped area.

With a few more keystrokes, the system started making the calls and dialed 27 phone numbers simultaneously.

Of the 473 numbers dialed, 384 messages were delivered.

Some were picked up by residents themselves, others were delivered to answering machines or voice mail mailboxes.

"This is not the answer to everything," said Davis County Sheriff's Sgt. Brian Law, but it is important that residents know the system exists.

Even so, CityWatch is just one component of the overall notification process which might include radio and television announcements, police driving through neighborhoods with a public address system, and volunteers going door-to-door.

And since the system can only access phone numbers found in the commercial database, unlisted and blocked numbers and cell phone numbers are not included.

"I thought it was very successful," said Kaysville Fire Chief Brett Larkin.

"Many people left their homes because of that call or at least were aware of the situation.