Union County will soon have the ability to send out mass notifications to its residents in the event of emergencies.
Sheriff Scott Harvel says a company called Hyper-Reach will provide this life-saving capability. He says the system can send thousands of messages to geographically targeted people in seconds.
"We can send out emergency alerts or messages via cell phone, text message, phone calls to land lines or cell phones and/or through emails and social media. So, it has a great number of ways to make contact with the residents of our country."
Harvel says this could have many life-saving applications.
"One of the most important things would be for weather alerts, things like that. But, also where we have an emergency situation where we might have to alert a school to go to some sort of lockdown status if we were doing some kind of search for somebody that could potentially be dangerous or a threat to the school."
Harvel says the service is free to residents. It'll cost the county $5,000 per year. He says it should be operational by the end of this month.
To sign up, call 618-661-0591 or click here.
