Washington County transitions to a new emergency alert system

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To ensure community members are informed during emergencies, Washington County encourages individuals to sign up for emergency alerts through the county’s new alerting system, Everbridge.

Through Everbridge, the county and partner first response agencies can issue emergency alerts to the entire county or to specific affected neighborhoods. Individuals who sign up will be alerted and receive critical information quickly in situations like severe weather, critical utility outages like boil water notices, missing persons, evacuations and other public safety situations.

When signing up, individuals can select how they would like to receive time-sensitive information including on a landline phone, cell phone, email address, by text message and more.

By switching to the Everbridge alert system, Washington County will join OR-Alert (https://oralert.gov/), the statewide alert and warning program. OR-Alert seeks to ensure that all Oregonians can receive critical emergency warnings, no matter what county they are in. OR-Alert also gives first responders a powerful way to quickly send targeted emergency information to communities threatened by hazards like wildfires and floods.

Getting emergency alerts gives you power to act quickly. It could save your life and the lives of your loved ones. Signing up for emergency alerts is easy through: https://www.publicalerts.org/signup.

Frequently asked questions for CodeRED account holders:

I live in Washington County and I've entered my contact information before. Do I need to do that again?

Yes! Many people in Washington County have added their emergency contact information in CodeRed, the County's old emergency alerting system. Unfortunately, there is no reliable way for user account information to be moved to the new system, so you will need to a make a new account in Everbridge and re-enter your contact information. This process is easy and takes about five minutes.

Why is Washington County changing their emergency alerting system?

Everbridge is the system used by OR-Alert, Oregon’s statewide alert and warning program. Being part of a statewide system means individuals will be able to receive alerts if they move to other parts of the state. It also allows public safety agencies to send messages quickly and easily for emergency incidents that involve more than one county.

Why can't my emergency information be transferred over to the new system?

There is no way to transfer individual accounts to the new system, so you would be unable to update your contact information or the area you'd like to recieve alerts from if it changes. By making a new account, Washington County can be sure emergency contact information is current and will reach the right people quickly. It also allows users to easily update their contact information if something changes and to select preferences for types of alerts to receive.

What will happen to the information I entered in the old system?

All individual accounts, including addresses, emails, and phone numbers, will be completely deleted from the old system.

Who should make an Everbridge account?

The system works best if each household member creates an account and signs up their own devices. If you sign up a household member's device on your account and acknowledge a message before it gets to their device the system may not contact their device. There is no limit to the number of accounts per address.

How will I know that I am getting an alert from Washington County Public Alerts?

Washington County’s public alert system as been assigned a 503 phone number which shows up as the Grand Ronde area. If you receive a phone call/voicemail from 503-461-8279 it is an alert from Washington County. If you opt in to text messages, the number will come from 88911. And if you decide to receive emails, the alerts will come from Washington County Alerts at [email protected].

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