NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — City of Hutchinson Director of Emergency Communications, Kevin Irwin, spoke to the Hutchinson City Council on Tuesday and encouraged residents to sign up for the Everbridge alerts to their email or phone.
"It is offered by the city and available to all county members through the 911 center," Irwin said. "It is free to sign up. You create your own account and you sign up for the warnings and watches and weather announcements that you get. It all comes from the National Weather Service. Please do so."
It will only interrupt your sleep when it needs to.
"There's also a nice little feature that we've added on," Irwin said. "It's the silent time. The watches, like a silent time from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., your phone won't go off. If it's a warning, sorry, your phone's going to go off, especially tornado, thunderstorm warnings, those kind of nature. The bonus is, there's actually almost 200 potential observations that can be chosen. We've got it down to 75.
The idea is that things like tsunamis don't happen here, so that warning isn't on their list. It does help when the public signs up for the updates, though, according to city council member Stacy Goss.
"I can't tell you how convenient it is to receive a text, especially if you wear a smart watch," Goss said. "You get an alert to your watch, as well, whenever there is bad weather or something like that. It's just a really great communication. There's also a direct tie in with our ISO city classification. We have to maintain a certain level of communication with the county and with the city, with the residents, in order to maintain that level one status that we have."
Better ISO ratings generally result in better insurance rates for home and property owners.
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