Carbon County has a new system to alert residents when emergencies happen in the area.

The Roam Secure Alert Network (RSAN) was recently purchased by the Northeast Region Counter Terrorism Task Force, which encompasses eight counties in Northeast Pennsylvania, to help bring updates to the residents and emergency service personnel. It was then implemented in mid-September at no cost to the county.Mark Nalesnik, Carbon County Emergency Management Agency coordinator; and Gary Williams, director of the Communications Center, introduced the system designed to help get the message out both on a county-wide scale and on a smaller scale to just certain groups."The notification system is for any kind of emergency alerts that the public should know about," Nalesnik said.The messages are sent through a text-based system."It's an excellent way to let them know and get the information out to the people," Nalesnik said."We can break it down to also send out messages to a group of numbers like fire departments, county employees, or emergency responders," Williams said, adding that the system can also be used as a back-up in case the pager system goes down.Types of alerts that will be sent out include weather, major road closures and other disasters that affect a large number of people.Residents who would wish to receive notifications need to sign up by visiting

carbon.alertpa.org. Once on the site, click "new user" to begin the process.You will be prompted to fill out your name and email address for login purposes and add secondary emails, cell numbers and pager numbers; as well as select a group and area of interest.Once you are registered, you can change or select additional groups and areas to receive alerts under the "My Alerts" tab.For more information on the RSAN system or for questions on signing up, contact the Carbon County EMA at (570) 325-3097.