Trouble in town? Get alerts on your smart phone

A growing number of Garden State residents, in all parts of Jersey, are signing up to get emergency notifications and alerts from their counties — and in some cases the towns where they live — delivered right to their cell phones.

According to John Donnadio, executive director of the New Jersey Association of Counties, every county in the state is now providing some type of notification service, for things like traffic problems, water main breaks, weather emergencies, haz-mat situations, and even wild animals on the loose.

“There’s been some stories of bear sightings, where they want to get that out to the residents to protect their safety and welfare,” he said.

Donnadio said “residents expect their elected officials and appointed officials to be proactive, particularly when it comes to protecting your safety or your property.”

To get this type of service delivered to your cell phone, you’ve got to sign up for it. The Nixle service is used by several municipalities, schools and police departments — but there are others, and towns or school districts will generally provide links from their own webpages.

“Every county maintains a very comprehensive website and those websites include a link to sign up for emergency notifications,” he said. “I expect this trend to continue and expand because county public information officers are a pretty sharp group, they’ll continue to take advantage of social media and the fact that everyone has a cell phone and also demands almost immediate information.”

Mike Cerra, the deputy executive director of the New Jersey League of Municipalities, said while it’s not known how many towns are providing this same type of service, a growing number of them are.

“Sometimes they’ll send information out as a text message, sometimes as an email,” he said. “Just like anything that is customer service oriented, you have to make it as accessible to the customer.”

He added, “We are more and more on the go and it’s important to get information out as fast as possible, such as a traffic backup because of a water-main break or a weather emergency or a bear has been spotted. You want to push that information out quickly to avoid people congesting in an area that might back up.”

Cerra also said “as we see more and more people relying on their smart phones, tablets and so forth, government has to adjust to that and be able to push this information out in a user-friendly format.”

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