Iroquois County now has a mass notification system to warn residents about local emergencies, hazards, and other threats. Iroquois County Emergency Management Agency has chosen Hyper-Reach to bring this life-saving capability to the area. Hyper-Reach is a state of the art mass emergency notification system designed specifically for public safety. The new emergency alert system will provide rapid notification of hazardous and urgent situations using a mix of telephone calls, text and email messages, smart speaker alerts and other advanced alerting methods. The system sends thousands of these messages to geographically targeted households in seconds, and can simultaneously deliver them to an even broader audience via social media, as well as sending broadcast messages to most current mobile telephones in an affected area using FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system. Iroquois County plans to use the service primarily for alerts about weather and environmental hazards. Landline phones are automatically enrolled for community alerts, but weather alerts to landline phones and community and weather alerts to mobile phones and email addresses are only included when people enroll. Residents and people who work in Iroquois County are encouraged to enroll now either by calling or texting “Alert” to (779) 218-9348 or by going to the website http://hyper-reach.com/iliroquoissignup.html. Residents can get emergency alerts via their Alexa-enabled smart speakers just by saying “Alexa, enable Hyper-Reach” and following the Alexa-provided instructions. Residents can also download the Hyper-Reach Anywhere app on their smartphone. Hyper-Reach Anywhere is a free smartphone app that allows individual citizens to manage and monitor the alerts they receive, both for their home and office addresses and for other addresses they care about such as those of elderly relatives or friends. For further questions on how to sign-up for community and weather alerts, public can call the EMA office at (815) 432- 6997.