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What
is Arlington County's Community Alert System?
Arlington County is one of the first counties to deploy an emergency
notification system for its residents and people working for businesses
located in the County. The Community Alert System will be used
to broadcast emergency notifications, updates and other important
information to you during a major incident.
Click to register
now!
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What
types of alerts will be sent?
Alert types may include life safety, fire, weather, accidents involving
utilities or roadways, team activation notifications, or disaster
notification such as a terrorist attack. A few examples of the
types of messages that can be sent through RSAN are:
Emergency Situations:
- Notify citizens of the location of
the nearest emergency shelter, available bed space,
hours of operation during a crisis;
- Notify citizens of available evacuation
routes during an emergency;
- Activate special teams within the
community, based upon an event
Precautionary Warnings:
- Severe weather warnings;
- Activate a citizen watch group if
mischievous activity is reported by the police;
- Pre-cautionary evacuation order
if on high alert
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How
are alerts sent and how do I receive them?
Alerts are sent across the Roam Secure Alert Network. You will
need to sign up for a Roam Secure Alert Network account to receive
the alerts.
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What
is the Roam Secure Alert Network?
Roam Secure Alert Network™ is an emergency communication
system used by governments, emergency management agencies and first
responders to send emergency alerts, notifications and updates
to your cell phone, pager, Blackberry, PDA and/or e-mail account.
All you have to do is sign up for a Roam Secure Alert Network™ account
to receive emergency alerts.
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What is
the cost of this service?
Arlington County is offering the Community Alert System service
free to residents of Arlington County and people working for businesses
located in Arlington County. You may sign up for a Roam Secure
Alert Network account free of charge. Your cell phone carrier may
charge you a few pennies per text message received. Arlington County
does not assume any responsibility for costs charged to you by
your carrier.
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What
is a Roam Secure Alert Network account?
Each resident of Arlington County, or people working for businesses
located in Arlington County may sign up for a Roam Secure Alert
Network™ account. You can add multiple devices (cell phones,
pagers, PDAs) to a Roam Secure Alert Network™ account. An
alert will be sent to each email account, cell phone and other
mobile device listed in your Roam Secure Alert Network™ account.
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How does
the Community Alert System work?
In an emergency situation an alert will be sent by Arlington County
authorized personnel and you will receive email notifications,
and several text messages on your cell phone or mobile device.
Read these messages promptly and follow the instructions.
Additional instructions may follow throughout
the emergency situation so keep your phone near you.
Even if the cell phones are busy, the messages should
still come through to your phone.
When you do receive an alert message, please
follow the instructions on that message. Please do NOT call
911 or Arlington's Emergency Communications Center as they are
already aware of the emergency -- and your call will tie up
precious resources, further endangering the emergency
situation.
We will make every effort to update the
County's website www.co.arlington.va.us in real time
with more information about the emergency. In addition,
you should tune to local TV and radio.
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Will
my cell phone work in a major emergency?
Alerts are delivered using the text messaging (SMS network) feature
of your cell phone. The alerts come across like a page on a pager.
ALL cell phone carriers, and paging companies, offer text messaging.
Nearly all phones purchased within the past few years are text
messaging capable. If you are unsure, contact your carrier
to ask about your phone and text messaging.
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What
is text-messaging and how do I sign-up for it?
Text messages are short messages sent to your phone, similar to
receiving a page. Each message contains between 100 and 160 characters,
or about 15 words, depending upon your carrier. An example of a
text message is the notification you receive on your phone when
you have new voicemail.
Most carriers activate the service automatically.
You should check with your carrier to make sure your
text messaging is active. See the carrier matrix for
a list of carriers and contact information.
If you are unfamiliar with reading text
messages on your phone, try these links to learn more
about your particular phone:
Nokia http://www.nokiahowto.com
Motorola http://commerce.motorola.com/consumer/QWhtml/manual.html
Ericsson http://www.ericsson.com/consumers/
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How
many devices/e-mail addresses can I add to my account?
You may have two devices and two e-mail addresses for your Roam
Secure Alert Network™ account.
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How
do I prevent Arlington Alert messages from going to my bulk/junk folder?
We are currently working with e-mail providers to ensure that our messages are
delivered to your Inbox and are not seen as bulk or junk mail and filtered to
other folders. You may also be able to take a few simple steps to help ensure
messages arrive at your Inbox by configuring your bulk/junk mail settings to
recognize our messages and place them in your Inbox.
MSN/Hotmail Safe List
One way for users with MSN/Hotmail accounts to ensure that messages are delivered
to their Inboxes is to add our domain to their Safe List. Follow the steps below
to add a Safe List entry:
- Login to your MSN mail account
- Click on the Options link on the upper right part of the page (next to Help)
- Select Mail from the menu on the left
- Click on the Junk E-mail Protection link
- Click on the Safe List link
- Enter arlingtonalert.com in the "Type an address or domain" box
- Click Add
Your Arlington Alert messages should now be delivered to your Inbox.
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How
do I register my BlackBerry?
You can register your BlackBerry in two ways:
1 - Enter the 10-digit mobile number and select the carrier
(Nextel 1-way, AT&T, etc.). Alerts will be cut into 150
character blocks.
2 - RSAN can also deliver full text alerts directly to
BlackBerry devices without going through a corporate
BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), thus ensuring redundancy
(in case of power outages, congestion, DOS attacks, etc. at
your BES). To register this way, pick "BlackBerry WebClient"
as your carrier and enter your full WebClient e-mail address
(e.g.: jsmith@nextel.blackberry.net) as the device identifier.
For more information about this service go to
http://www.blackberry.com/support/client/index.shtml
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How
do I receive Arlington alerts on XM Satellite Radio?
Sign up for Arlington Alerts at www.arlingtonalert.com and visit www.xmradio.com to learn about subscribing to the XM
Satellite Radio service. In addition to e-mail, text messages on cell phones,
pagers and PDAs, important Arlington Alerts will be broadcast over
the Metro Washington, DC Weather, Traffic and Emergency Channel 214 on XM Radio.
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