Receiving Emergency Alerts
Contributed by Provi Sharpe, Director of Emergency Management, MDTAP
FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) gives public safety officials an effective way to alert and warn the public about serious emergencies using the Emergency Alert System, the Commercial Mobile Alert System, NOAA Weather Radio and other public alerting systems from a single interface. Messages are delivered from local alerting authorities to the general public via broadcast TV and radio, cable and satellite TV and radio, mobile/cellular and wireless devices and signage.
Maryland’s IPAWS alerting authorities are:
The Cecil County Department of Emergency Services and St. Mary’s County Government, both of which utilize the Code Red program under the Emergency Communication Network. Cecil County residents can register here.
St. Mary’s County residents can register here.
The Howard County Office of Emergency Management’s program is NotifyMeHoward. Howard County residents can register here.
Baltimore City residents can get updates from the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) via Twitter https://twitter.com/BaltimoreOEM Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BaltimoreOEM and email subscription https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/MDBALT/subscriber/new.
The Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) utilizes several methods to alert Maryland residents. To register for alerts via Twitter, visit https://twitter.com/mdmema.
For MEMA’s RSS Feeds visit http://news.maryland.gov/mema/feed/rss.
You can also obtain information on MEMA’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MDMEMA and on Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/mdmema/
To alert the general public, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) utilizes Twitter at https://twitter.com/fema. FEMA also uses mobile resources, including smart phone apps and text messages – you can register for this service at http://www.fema.gov/mobile.
