When emergencies arise, public safety officials can use timely and reliable systems to send alerts. Some require you to “opt-in” or subscribe while others, like the Emergency Alert System (EAS), may not.
PC Alert
Pierce County ALERT is a free service that allows you to sign up and receive notifications about emergencies that may affect the locations you care about. This service allows fire, police and other agencies dealing with emergency response to send out accurate and timely information to residents. Sign up online at piercecountywa.gov/alert, text PCALERT to 888-777 or call (253) 798-6595.
FEMA Mobile App
The FEMA App allows you to receive real-time weather and emergency alerts, send notifications to loved ones, locate emergency shelters in your area, get preparedness strategies and more. You can download in your app store or text ANDROID to 43362 for Android phones or APPLE to 43362 for Apple products.
Volcano Notification Service
The Volcano Notification Service (VNS) is a free service that sends you notification emails about volcanic activity happening at US monitored volcanoes. You can customize the VNS to only deliver notifications for certain volcanoes, or a range of volcanoes, as well as choose the separate notification types you want to receive. Sign up by creating an account at volcanoes.usgs.gov/vns2
Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs)
Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are short emergency messages from authorized federal, state, local, tribal and territorial public alerting authorities that can be broadcast from cell towers to any WEA‐enabled mobile device in a locally targeted area. WEAs can be sent by state and local public safety officials, the National Weather Service, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the President of the United States.
WEAs look like text messages but are designed to get your attention with a unique sound and vibration repeated twice.
WEAs are no more than 360 characters and include the type and time of the alert, any action you should take and the agency issuing the alert.
WEAs are not affected by network congestion and will not disrupt texts, calls or data sessions that are in progress.
You are not charged for receiving WEAs and there is no need to subscribe.
Type of WEA/EAS alerts you may receive:
Extreme weather and hydrologic warnings
Local emergencies requiring evacuation or immediate action
AMBER Alerts - instantly activates communities to assist in the search for and the safe recovery of an endangered missing or abducted child.
Blue Alerts - a quick response system designed to issue and coordinate alerts following an attack upon a law enforcement officer.
Presidential Alerts during a national emergency.
Credit: piercecounty.wa.gov
weather.gov
mil.wa.gov
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