It’s important to keep your cell phone charged and have a battery charger ready to go in case of emergencies. Some state and county officials may use it to warn of pending disasters, or to give direction in the midst of a crisis.
For example, the Emergency Management Agency (EMA) in Illinois plans to use an e-notification system for disaster alerts in southern counties. Nixle systems is a new community information service provider that will be used to send messages county-wide or to individual neighborhoods, similar to what you’d get on Twitter. The difference being that Nixle is more secured and residents can have confidence that the messages are authenticated and are actually coming from the EMA. Deputy director Shawn Priddy of the EMA welcomes the new alert system, citing a previous problem the agency had trying to alert residents during a flood:
“It would have been good in the flooding two years ago when we did the recommended evacuations…This service is geographically based, so we could have limited it to that area or when we rescinded the evacuation, there were some problems because we had rescinded it and still, several hours later there were people loading up U-Hauls. We had to send teams out door-to-door to let everyone know.”
If you don’t already own one, find an emergency radio or flashlight that also doubles as a cell phone charger. This will help you to contact family members, and receive e-alerts if you live in an area that uses them.