Emergency alert system

[Guest confidence]

How would you know if there was a sudden disaster or catastrophe in your region if you were far enough away from it that it didn't effect you immediately and didn't happen to be in front of a TV? Anybody here use any internet news alert systems to try to get notified by SMS, etc. in the event of a disaster? Was just wondering if there is a particular service that anybody uses. I was thinking of setting up Google news alerts for certain keywords but thought maybe some of y'all have already set this up and would have ideas.

 

Of course, if the disaster takes out phone and internet service, then you wouldn't be able to a receive the alert that way and would be left to ham radio, etc. I was just thinking though, let's say you live an hour away from Nashville and a natural disaster or homeland security threat arises that won't effect you for about an hour or two? It would be nice to know about it ahead of time. Also, many of us get zillions of email and whatnot throughout the day but if there was an app or something that popped up an alert on your phone?

 

I'm only talking about MAJOR catastrophes in your own region or in the US. Not daily alerts about random earthquakes on the other side of the world. I'm talking about getting to hear about, say, 911 immediately, instead of a coworker telling you about it 30 minutes after it happened.

[2.ooohhh]

Andoid v? and iOS 6+ have emergency alerts build into the OS and enabled by the cell carriers.

[knewcomb]

Would those still work if cell service was knocked out?

[mikegideon]

Would those still work if cell service was knocked out?

 

No, but neither would SMS. About the most reliable signals are still broadcast stations.