Kingsport selects emergency notification provider
Telephone-based, mass notification systems are used by thousands of police and fire departments across the United States to warn citizens about local emergencies, hazards and other threats.
After months of research, the City of Kingsport is announcing the selection of Hyper-Reach as the city’s emergency notification provider. Hyper-Reach is a state of the art mass emergency notification system designed specifically for public safety.
“Our job is to protect the citizens of Kingsport as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible,” said Lt Kevin Hite, executive director of Kingsport 911. “We reviewed all the major vendors for emergency notification services and Hyper-Reach gave us everything we needed at just the right price.”
Kingsport, its public works department and Sullivan County 911 will all be using the Hyper-Reach system. Kingsport employees will be training on the new system in April and Hite said he expects to have the service fully operational in Kingsport later this spring.
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 even 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.
Kingsport 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 Kingsport are encouraged to enroll now either by calling or texting “Alert” to (423) 390-0272 or by going to the website http://hyper-reach.com/tnsullivansignup.html. Citizens can get emergency alerts via their Alexa-enabled smart speakers just by saying “Alexa, enable Hyper-Reach” and following the Alexa-provided instructions.
Citizens can also download the Hyper-Reach Anywhere app on their smartphone. Hyper-Reach Anywhere is a free smartphone app that allows individual citizens to manage and monitor the alerts they receive, both for their home and office addresses and for other addresses they care about such as those of elderly relatives or friends.
“We’re honored to have been selected by Kingsport ECD and Sullivan County to provide their emergency alerts,” said Sam Asher, President of Hyper-Reach. “It’s gratifying to be part of an effort to save lives and protect property and we take that responsibility very seriously.”
