Putnam 911 Making Changes To Emergency Alert System

Putnam County 911 making changes to its emergency alert system.

Assistant Director Brandon Smith said that the previously free system began charging for services, they decided to streamline alerts into a program that utilizes a communications service the county already has.

“What’s really cool about the Smart 911 and the Rave Alert system is that it’s automated,” Smith said. “As soon as that alert comes through from the National Weather Service or the federal government, or wherever that alert or notice comes from, it automatically  goes to this new system that we’ve been on for a while, we just haven’t transferred folks over.”

Smith said that using the alert system will provide immediate emergency updates for everything both weather and non-weather-related. He said that it also prevents user error, as emergency personnel used to manually enter all alerts.

Smith said that the best way to get connected to the new system is to visit the county website at putnamcountytn.gov and visit the 911 page. He said from there you can fill out whatever personal information you feel comfortable providing. Smith said alerts can come in the form of emails, texts, calls, or notifications.

“It will ask you to create an account and it creates a Smart 911 profile,” Smith said. “You don’t have to enter any of that information you don’t want to. You can fill in the boxes you want us to have in case of an emergency, but you don’t have to fill in any of those boxes you can just click through and sign up for the alerts at the end. We cannot access that information unless you call 911 in an emergency so it’s really just two systems in one for us.”