Get Cortland County Emergency Alerts the Way you Prefer with Smart911

Jack Eves: [00:00:00] X 1 0 1, always classic. Jack Eves in the studio. And joining me today is Scott Roman, the Executive Director for the Cortland County Department of Emergency Response. Scott, good to see you.

Scott Roman: Good morning. It’s nice to see you.

Jack Eves: Thank you for coming in. A lot’s happening we want to talk about something that residents in the county have an option to sign up for so they can, stay alerted.

And that is the SMART 9 1 1 system, right.

Scott Roman: That’s correct. Cortland County, probably 18 months ago, instituted a smart 9 0 1 system where the residents can go online and register their information so that they will get, alert notifications for incidents happening in and around the county.

Jack Eves: When they get that.

System, it’s free to sign up, is that correct?

Scott Roman: That’s correct. You can free to sign up, you go through the county, the Cortland County website, or you can go to smart nine one one.com and sign up, pick Cortland County, and you fill in the information and it’s a great way for you to get information about what’s going on and around the county.

Jack Eves: So with this system, how does it exactly work? When will someone possibly expect to get a notification from it?

Scott Roman: So [00:01:00] you typically get weather notifications, severe incidents like, this weekend’s cold or cold weather that’s been occurring. You would also get things like, missing persons or you would get things of, like that nature, like, we’re looking for somebody, or there’s police activity.

Stay outta the area. You would get all sorts of notifications like that.

Jack Eves: And you can sign up right online. That’s right.

Scott Roman: You can sign up right online. It’s also a great program to, if you are, taking care of your elderly parents or you are a caregiver for somebody, you can sign up and anytime there’s an incident at their location, you would also get a notification.

Jack Eves: That’s a really good thing to note too, especially, it’s a. Extra reassuring thing, especially for older parents obviously with the colder temperatures and all that, it’s a good way to stay alert of knowing what’s going on and even help the public out, right? If it’s staying away from an area or weather coming,

Scott Roman: right?

Correct. So, if, if you’re taking care of somebody and you didn’t know or you’re out of the area, ’cause even if you’re not in Cortland, you would get this notification through your cell phone. Like say Mom called or Mom fell and somebody needs to go help her. You would get that notification. [00:02:00] But likewise, you would.

Flooding is in progress or the sheriff has police activity somewhere, or even the village, if they have something going on Main Street, please avoid the area. You’d get all those kinds of notifications.

Jack Eves: That’s good to hear. And obviously all the information too is well kept and safe. It’s not shared by anyone else.

Scott Roman: That’s correct. We don’t share any of our information. Everything’s locked down. We don’t ever buy it. We don’t ever sell it. We require you to sign up and once you do sign up the system, will email you every six months to make sure you’re active. And if you aren’t, your profile will go inactive.

So if you move away or anything, then you’re out. Your information becomes purged.

Jack Eves: And this system, does it include text message and voicemail, or

Scott Roman: it does include both? Depends on the nature of the alert. The dispatcher, the nine one center can record a voice message and it’ll go out. But it will also typically be a text message.

People tend to accept text messages in this world, much better than voicemail. Mm-hmm. ‘Cause it’ll come from a strange phone number and nobody ever answers strange phone numbers anymore. But we do send it both ways.

Jack Eves: That’s great to hear and obviously good to see too at that [00:03:00] consistent updating every six months as you say.

So, ’cause as we spoke before on air, not everyone has actually really, no one has a landline anymore. So this is just a good way to confirm that you are living in this area or in this area.

Scott Roman: There there’s been a lot of comments about our Reverse nine one system and that’s the, that was the reality.

Reverse nine one was designed around landlines and landlines are not in use like they used to be. Maybe three or 4% of the population in Cortland County has a landline.

Jack Eves: Mm-hmm.

Scott Roman: The vast majority run on cell phones and then they go, how come I didn’t get notified of incidents? Cell phones are the way, the way it goes.

And because you’re so mobile with a cell phone, we need you to register your phone differently than you would’ve ’cause the landline never moves.

Jack Eves: That’s right and true. And again, to sign up for that, all you have to do is go to alerts.smart nine one one.com and then just enter that you’re in Cortland County,

Scott Roman: right?

Either way. Corland County’s website or smart nine one.com. We’ll get you where you need to go.

Jack Eves: Awesome. Sky, is there anything else you’d like to add?

Scott Roman: No. I just appreciate everybody’s support and we look forward to serving the community.

Jack Eves: Awesome. Appreciate you coming in here [00:04:00] for X 1 0 1, I’m Jack Eves.