EL PASO COUNTY — The newly launched site from the Pikes Peak Office of Emergency Management is designed to inform the Pike Peak Region about signing up for alerts, making a plan in case of emergencies, building a kit, and staying in the know on mobile devices.
PPROEM.com includes important information to help your family prepare for winter storms, wildfires, flash floods, and more.
Does your family have a communication plan to follow if separated during an emergency? How about a way to have access to important documents if you have to leave fast or recover from a disaster? The site has those resources and more in a downloadable form.
While local media outlets, such as KOAA News5, bring you real-time information on emergency events, you can prepare yourself by knowing evacuation levels and where to go for help.
A really useful item to have on hand is the Pikes Peak Regional Emergency Preparedness and Safety Guide, available as a download or available in hard copy by request.
There's also an app. The Pikes Peak Prepared App (iOS and Android) also provides a way to create your own readiness plan, access emergency guides, non-emergency messages about preparedness, and a way to stay informed with events and weather alerts.
WATCH: ARE YOU PREPARED FOR THE WORST?
Emergency management leaders are continuing to encourage the community to sign up for Peak Alerts to ensure El Paso and Teller County residents are informed in case of natural disasters or human-caused dangers that pose a potential threat to people's safety.
The sign-up process takes between three to five minutes.
RELATED: El Paso-Teller County 911 Authority expands Peak Alerts reach through new database
Only 23% of El Paso and Teller County residents are signed up to receive emergency notifications from Peak Alerts. Emergency officials credit this issue to the decline in landlines, the rise in mobile devices, and the challenges emergency officials face in reaching community members.
The 911 authority is implementing a new contact database into the Peak Alerts system to combat this. Resident Connection is one of the largest databases of residential and business landline, VoIP, and mobile numbers specifically for official emergency notifications.
WHEN WILL YOU BE NOTIFIED?
Oftentimes, emergency alert systems have certain levels of customization to notification settings giving you more customization as to what you find important. Peak Alerts allow for this, but will often by default alert on emergencies surrounding natural or man-made disasters, hazardous materials incidents, missing persons, law enforcement activity impacting the public, and evacuation notices to name a few.
WATCH: NOT RECEIVING EMERGENCY ALERTS? THERE IS A REASON
During the 403 Fire that burned over 1,000 acres on the border of Teller and Park Counties in April, many Peak Alert members asked why they were not receiving alerts about the 403 Fire. The answer is simple, if you are not in the emergency area or in a spot not threatened by a specific emergency, you will not be alerted to a threat.
Peak Alerts will notify you about emergencies that happen near your registered address(es). Learn more about Peak Alerts or sign up yourself here.
