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Telephone-based mass notifications systems are used by thousands of public safety agencies across the US to warn citizens about local emergencies, hazards and other threats.

Davie County is launching Hyper-Reach to help bring this same life-saving capability to the area. Hyper-Reach is a state of the art mass emergency notification system designed specifically for public safety, said Rodney Pierce,  Davie 911 communications director. The county expects to have the service fully operational by the end of August.

The new emergency alert system will provide rapid notification of hazardous and urgent situations using a mix of telephone calls, text and email messages, and TTY/TDD service for the hearing impaired. The system sends thousands of these messages to geographically targeted households in seconds, and can simultaneously deliver them to an even broader audience via social media, as well as sending broadcast messages to most current mobile telephones (made since 2011) in an affected area by providing access to FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system.

“Our job is to protect the citizens of Davie County as effectively and cost-effectively as possible.” said Pierce. “We reviewed all the major vendors for emergency notification service, and Hyper-Reach gave us everything we needed at a great cost savings to the taxpayer. We’re really excited about this new capability.”

The county plans to use the service primarily for alerts about weather and environmental hazards, criminal activity and missing persons. Landline phones are automatically enrolled for community alerts, but weather alerts to landline phones and community and weather alerts to VoIP phones, mobile phones, and email addresses are only included when people enroll. Residents and people who work in Davie County are encouraged to enroll (using a county street address) by calling or texting “Alert” to (336) 477-2478 or by going to the website http://hyper-reach.com/ncdaviesignup.html (English) or https://bit.ly/3xs0Ifl (Spanish).

Residents can get emergency alerts via Alexa-enabled smart speakers by saying “Alexa, enable Hyper-Reach” and following the Alexa-provided instructions.

Residents can download the Hyper-Reach Anywhere app on a smartphone. It is a free smartphone app that allows residents to manage and monitor alerts they receive, for their home and office addresses and for other addresses they care about such as those of elderly relatives or friends.