‘A long time coming’: Philly launches flood alerts for Eastwick neighborhood

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Residents of Philadelphia’s low-lying Eastwick section can now receive emergency alerts about  potential flooding in their neighborhood, after the city launched its first place-based messaging system.

“This system has been a long time coming,” said Brenda Whitfield, a block captain on one of Eastwick’s most flood-prone streets and a member of Eastwick United CDC. “It’s not going to take away the anxiety that we’ve felt from flooding, but at least it gives us a warning to prepare.”

Homes in Eastwick have flooded several times in the last three decades as the nearby Darby and Cobbs creeks overflowed their banks. The last major flood, caused by Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020, damaged close to 500 single-family homes in Philadelphia and left Eastwick residents repairing homes for years. 

The new alert program is part of the city’s opt-in ReadyPhiladelphia emergency alert system, which sends voicemails, text messages, emails or mobile app notifications about safety issues such as fires or winter weather. It comes as the city is ramping up its efforts to help Eastwick residents respond to flooding and to solve the flooding itself. Officials initially estimated the alert system would be finished in summer 2023, then announced its launch last month.

ReadyPhiladelphia weather alerts generally offer city-wide updates. For example, a message sent this summer warned recipients that the National Weather Service had issued a flood warning for counties including Philadelphia, warning residents of possible “flooding of small creeks and streams, urban areas, highways, streets, and underpasses as well as other drainage and low lying areas.” Some messages are more geographically specific, such as a message sent Thursday that read, “Coastal Flood Advisory … for the Delaware River. Do not drive through flooded roads.”

But these messages have generally not been helpful for Eastwick residents, Whitfield said.

“It has nothing to do with Eastwick and Cobbs Creek and the flooding that takes place when we have heavy rain,” she said.

During Isaias, residents recalled “pandemonium” as people were left unaware that the creeks had flooded until water came into their homes.

So in 2022, the Office of Emergency Management directed grant money from the city’s Operations Transformation Fund to design a system that would send neighborhood-specific emergency alerts to a subset of ReadyPhiladelphia subscribers who opt in to receiving information about Eastwick.

The new system will use forecasts from the National Weather Service, combined with flooding thresholds identified through past flood events, to determine when rainfall could put the creeks in Eastwick at risk of overflowing. Officials plan to send alerts before, during and after a rain event that poses an actual risk of flooding in the neighborhood.

“Every single message we have built in to either help them prepare, help them respond or help them recover,” said Erin Mossop, alert & warning coordinator at the Office of Emergency Management.

For example, messages could tell residents to move their vehicles to higher ground, gather important documents, elevate items within their homes or evacuate the neighborhood. The messages will also recommend recipients share information with friends and family who might not be signed up, Mossop said.

The program was designed after city officials and contractors held focus groups with Eastwick residents to determine what information would be useful in the messages.

Whitfield said the alerts will be a big improvement from having to manually monitor the creek near her home.

“When we got a heavy rain, … we would go over to the creek and see how far it was up to the bank, and then come back in the house, then go back and see if it was overflowing,” Whitfield said.  “That was physically done by humans — us.”

The Eastwick alert system still lacks a much-anticipated feature: livestream cameras that should will allow emergency managers and residents to watch the creeks in real time during rain events. The Office of Emergency Management has purchased this equipment and met with partners to determine suitable locations to install it, Mossop said. The city is now working on launching a public-facing web page where residents will be able to view the camera feeds.

Whitfield said the challenge now is making sure that people know about the Eastwick-specific alerts and get signed up. She worries especially about elders who might not have cell phones and people who are not tech savvy.

Citywide, roughly 72,300 people — less than 5% of residents — are signed up for ReadyPhiladelphia. Over 1,000 people have already opted in to the Eastwick-specific alerts since they launched, said Office of Emergency Management spokesperson Jeffrey Kolakowski.

The opt-in ReadyPhiladelphia system is just one part of Philly’s three-tiered system of emergency alerts. For more urgent matters, such as potential evacuations, the city sends alerts to a list of landlines and cell phones. For the most crucial alerts, officials can send Amber Alert-like push notifications to cell phones within specific geographic areas and send messages out over radio and TV.

The Office of Emergency Management considers Eastwick’s place-based messaging program a pilot, and hopes to eventually replicate it in other areas of the city.

How to sign up for Eastwick-specific alerts

Residents of Eastwick will need to sign up for the new Eastwick-specific alerts even if they’re already registered for ReadyPhiladelphia.

To sign up, create or sign into your ReadyPhiladelphia account here, then select “Eastwick” from the subscription options.

It’s also possible to sign up for ReadyPhiladelphia by texting READYPHILA to 888-777, but this method will not register a user for the Eastwick-specific alerts.