Northwest Iowa — The State of Iowa created the AlertIowa system years ago to keep people informed in the event of an emergency. Now, a new vendor has been chosen, and if people haven’t registered or re-registered in the last couple of months, they will need to do that soon.
That’s from O’Brien County Emergency Management Director Jared Johnson. He tells us about it.
He says the AlertIowa system has worked great for O’Brien County.
EMA officials tell us that state requirements mandated that the existing contract be let out for additional bids before renewal. During that process, a new vendor was selected that offers more features, capabilities, and resident options. Officials say the new alerting system will be more robust, reliable, and secure. They tell us that the new platform features custom and user-selected alerts in multiple languages; the ability for residents to identify their access and functional needs for disaster preparedness and response; and the ability for local officials to integrate alerts into a single system across various communications platforms.
Johnson says the new system is active now, but the old system will be going away as of July 1st. And again, you can sign up here for any participating county.
As a side note — 90 out of the state’s 99 counties participate in AlertIowa, but one of the counties in our area does not. Sioux County uses the Nixle system instead. Click here to sign up for Nixle Alerts.
More information — Here’s a poster with QR Code that you can scan to sign up (O’Brien County only), followed by a video with more information from the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
