JaCo tests county-wide emergency alert system

SOUTHERN OREGON, —Ahead of wildfire season, emergency managers are testing the local notification system Thursday, to keep you safe.  You may have gotten an emergency notification on your phone or email Thursday. Don’t worry, it was just a test and one that’s becoming increasingly important in the Rogue Valley.

Jackson County and its 11 cities sent out a county-wide Citizen Alert test Thursday morning, to get ready for wildfire season. It’s to build awareness about the county’s emergency alert system, and to get more people registered.

“Rouge Valley Emergency Management, this is a test of the citizen alert mass notification system.”

That’s a voicemail, from the mass alert sent out across the Rogue Valley Thursday. It went out starting at around 10 am.

“The point of this alert is just to start getting our residents thinking about fire season preparedness and other evacuation and other preparedness activities they can be doing including signing up citizen alert,” said Jackson County Emergency Manager, Holly Powers.

Powers says Citizen Alert allows you to get notified about emergencies and other community notifications via your home phone, cell, text message, or email Thursday’s test only reached individuals that are already signed up for the citizen alert system. Powers says it’s the primary notification system in the county.

“This is one of the tools that we really try and focus on to get the word out as quickly as possible because we can do a large number of phone calls, emails, or text messages at the same time and we just try and merry up all those tools are resources to spread the word as best we can,” said Powers.

We’re told both Ashland and Medford wanted to test their individualized zones. The rest of the cities that have pre-designated zones, elected to be part of the Jackson County alert.

“Everybody within Jackson County who is signed up for citizen alert should have gotten a notification either through the app, Ashland process, Medford process, or the county process,” said Aaron Ott, Medford’s Emergency Management Coordinator.

Since the Almeda Fire in September 2020, Powers says more than 66,000 people signed up for the program online, in Jackson and Josephine county. In the past 4 days alone, as the county got the word out about the test, over 1,000 new people registered.

“We can definitely have a quick means to pinpoint notifications so that we don’t have over to notify the whole county or the whole city and we can really get the message to those directly impacted,” said Ott.

If you didn’t get the notification or aren’t sure if you’re signed up or to sign up, visit jacksoncounty.org/emergency or www.rvem.org

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Jenna King is the 6pm and 11pm anchor for NBC5 News. Jenna is a Burbank, CA native. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Sports Business. During her time at Oregon she was part of the student-run television station, Duck TV. She also grew her passion for sports through her internship with the PAC 12 Network. When Jenna is not in the newsroom you can find her rooting for her hometown Dodgers, exploring the outdoors or binging on the latest Netflix release.
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