Central Florida counties use opt-in alert systems to send public safety information directly to residents, but registration rates vary widely across Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties.<\/p>\n
The county systems are separate from Wireless Emergency Alerts that can appear on cellphones for life-threatening emergencies, such as an Amber Alert. County systems require residents to register before they can receive alerts.<\/p>\n
Emergency Alert Systems in Central Florida<\/p>\n
In Orange County, 105,000 users are registered for OCFL Alert. Based on the county\u2019s population of about 1.4 million in the 2020 census, about 7% of residents receive those alerts.<\/p>\n
Osceola County has just under 20,000 people registered for Alert Osceola, or about 5% of the county.<\/p>\n
Seminole County has more than 229,000 people registered for Alert Seminole, which is nearly 48% of county residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the only way that government can communicate back with our community directly,\u201d Seminole County Emergency Manager Alan Harris said.<\/p>\n
Harris said the alerts can cover public safety concerns like hurricanes, green algae in lakes, hazardous spills and boil-water notices.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything that the public would need to know may be a public safety concern,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n
The alerts can also be targeted to specific locations rather than sent countywide. Harris said Seminole County draws a map around an affected area and sends alerts only to people within that map.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are very geolocated,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n
Some Central Florida residents said they are already signed up, while others said they had not heard of the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does make me feel safe, that is for sure,\u201d said Seminole County resident Jorge Moreno.<\/p>\n
June Kemp, who lives in Orange County, said she finds the alerts useful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is helpful,\u201d Kemp said. \u201cI think any alerts are helpful, if you ask me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others were not registered and did not even know the county offered an alert system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first I am hearing about it,\u201d said Seminole County resident Noah Jackson.<\/p>\n
Besides the county alerts, Harris said residents should also check their phone settings to make sure Wireless Emergency Alerts are enabled.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery important to keep that open, because there is not going to be a lot of them,\u201d Harris said. \u201cWhen you do get an alert like that, you want to receive that type of alert.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Central Florida counties use opt-in alert systems to send public safety information directly to residents, but registration rates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[767,274,17173,17174,315,770,4717,2174,3833,115,1335,139,141,140,1976,9429,1014,3315,278,2261,221],"class_list":["post-356176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-community","tag-app-top-stories","tag-app-weather","tag-app-weather-stories","tag-brevard-county","tag-community-news","tag-flagler-county","tag-lake-county","tag-marion-county","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-osceola-county","tag-sarah-winkelmann","tag-seminole-county","tag-sumter-county","tag-top-stories","tag-volusia-county","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}