Residents in Carbon and Monroe counties are able to register for a new emergency alert system.

For several years Monroe County residents have been able to register for an emergency alert system known as Redi-Notify Monroe.The surrounding counties have similar programs. The alert programs are part of the emergency notification plans that went into effect after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.The creation of the Department of Homeland Security brought grant money into the states to aid in various emergency preparedness programs. One of the most important parts of being prepared is being able to get the word out when there is a natural or man-made disaster occurring.The Northeast Pennsylvania Counter Terrorism Task Force is an eight-county team headquartered in Monroe County. Counties included in the group are Monroe, Carbon, Pike, Wayne, Lehigh, Lackawanna, Susquehanna and Northampton.CodeRED will be replacing the Redi-Notify program and has a much broader range and greater capability then the older counterpart.CodeRED is used throughout the United States. Any person who has the app downloaded onto their cellphone will be automatically notified if an emergency situation exists in their current location.“We have a lot of travelers in Monroe County who travel Route 80 to and from New Jersey for work,” said Mary Ellen Keegan, deputy director of Emergency Management for Monroe County. “If we have an accident, say in Tannersville, and the road is closed, travelers will be notified hopefully with enough time to plan an alternate route.”According to Keegan, all new cellphones have a chip which is set to deliver national level alerts. To get local alerts you need to go to your county’s home page and register. In Monroe County that would be

www.monroecountypa.gov/codered. Lackawanna, Susquehanna and Lehigh counties have CodeRED links set up on under the Emergency Management tab on each county’s website.Carbon residents can now sign up for the notifications online at

www.carboncounty.com and opt in to community alerts. The CodeRED icon is on the left panel. Once you click on the “Get it now” link, complete the community notification enrollment page and verify your information. You will be asked to create a user name and password, then scroll down to the section titled “Additional Notifications” and make sure to click on “Community Notifications.”Residents in other counties should continue to watch the local Emergency Management pages for the link.Keegan suggests that local residents register in multiple counties.“If you live in Monroe but work in Carbon County, maybe your kids go to school in another county, you are going to want to know if something is going on,” she said. “This way you can be better prepared and aware of what is happening.”CodeRED will give notifications of imminent dangerous weather conditions, traffic alerts, shelter openings and evacuations. The new system also has the ability to send alerts to landlines and email addresses. This allows the system to get to more people who do not have access to cellphones or who have disabilities, making the use of a cellphone not possible.“We can now reach a population that we could not before,” Keegan said. “We are always looking for better ways to connect.”The CodeRED system also has the ability to pinpoint a specific area for messages. The operator can map out a parameter and reach all of the users within the identified area and send out an alert to that group of users.