Nixle: Community Alert Systems

Unless you've spent the last few days isolated from society without internet and news coverage, there's a good chance that you've probably heard something about Hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy is currently a Category 2 hurricane.  As of this morning, the hurricane is affecting the Florida coastline.  Although there are various projected paths and a bit of uncertainty as to where Hurricane Sandy will be making her debut on land, at this point in time the hurricane is predicted to severely affect almost all of the East coast!

A weather event such as Hurricane Sandy will most likely bring a great deal of rain, thunder and lightning, and extremely high winds (upwards of 100+ mph).

Depending on the location of your department and the severity of the storm, there is a pretty good likelihood that your department might be greatly affected by this storm.

Although it is too late to really institute any new technology for your department at this point in time, every department should look into Nixle for future major weather issues (and major events in general).  Civilian communications are critical to an effective emergency response, and over 85% of civilians can be instantly reached on their mobile phone by text message. In crisis situations, timely information saves lives, and there is no more effective channel to quickly reach large populations than mobile text messaging.

Nixle allows police departments, fire departments and various other city agencies to use them as a publishing system to send alerts via text message and email to the residents of your community.  This information can go out to the community as a whole or it can be targeted toward specific locations within the community, such as alerting residents in a certain section of town that it is recommended they evacuate due to flood waters.

As if the service offered by Nixle wasn't great enough, this program is FREE to public service agencies.  To enroll, you simple need to register your agency on their website.