By Maddy Vitale
When emergencies occur, responders have only precious minutes to get to a call.
And when it floods, people in shore communities rely on messages that alert them to move their vehicles or even get out of their homes.
Sea Isle City does not take those alerts lightly.
With a new way of getting emergency notifications pushed out to the public, those vital alerts will be in real time, Sea Isle Police Chief Tom McQuillen explained Monday.
The department will create and publish messages through Nixle, which replaces the CodeRED system. Nixle will then deliver the information to the public instantly through text, email and web messages. Notifications can also be accessed online at Nixle’s website at www.nixle.com, McQuillen said in a letter to residents on the department’s Facebook page.
“This is almost instantaneous. It is as close to real time as possible,” McQuillen said. “When we started looking at different systems, we found it was the most user-friendly, real-time distribution of emergency messages when time is of the essence. The last thing we want is to struggle with a system with 15 steps to follow. Nixle has made it really user-friendly and certainly helps when seconds are critical.”
While the new system is already being utilized, the chief is urging anyone who hasn’t signed up yet to do so.
“It is in effect now, so we are just encouraging everybody who has an interest to sign up,” he said. “Whether they live here, have a vacation home, visit or work here, they should sign up and get our alerts to be informed about what is going on.”
Topics include hazardous weather alerts, public safety alerts, traffic congestion, police activity, as well as other relevant safety and community information.
McQuillen noted that this is the second piece of the city’s Flood Warning System, installed earlier this year. The flood alert system notifies the public of flooded streets through blinking road signs.
“When the flood signs are activated, we could push out a message to the people in those flood zones,” McQuillen said.
There is a major reason the police department is switching to Nixle, he said.
“We are always looking at ways to improve our communication and increase our outreach and in doing the research for this, we found Nixle is a lot more time-sensitive,” McQuillen said. “By making this transition we hope to be able to make the notifications in as close to real time as possible.”
City Council approved Nixle back in February or March. Once approval was given, the police department, along with Nixle officials, went to work setting up the system.
A team, including McQuillen, will be handling the alerts. They include Detective Sgt. Bill Bradshaw, Capt. Anthony Garreffi and Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Tom D’Intino.
The service is secure, reliable and easy to use. People who sign up choose what information they want and whether they want it sent to their cell phone, email or over the web.
To register, people may go to https://local.nixle.com/signup/widget/i/17490 or by texting “SEAISLEALERT” to 888-777. You can also consult the Frequently Asked Questions section at www.nixle.com/consumer-faqs/
