PORTLAND, Ore. — Washington County is switching to a new emergency alert system called Everbridge starting Oct. 25, replacing the county's older CodeRED system, according to a Sunday press release from the county's Emergency Management Department.
Like its predecessor, Everbridge will allow the county and first responder agencies to issue emergency alerts for public safety situations like severe weather, utility outages, boil water notices, missing persons or evacuations.
The alerts can be sent to the entire county or to specific affected neighborhoods. Residents who sign up can choose to receive alerts via landline, cell phone, email or text messages. Registration takes about five minutes, according to the county.
The county is switching systems because Everbridge is compatible with OR-Alert, Oregon's statewide emergency message system. The shared system will give public safety officials an easy way to send messages for incidents that involve more than one county.
Residents can sign up at publicalerts.org/signup, which includes links to the specific system signup pages for Washington, Multnomah, Clackamas, Columbia, Marion, Linn and Benton Counties, as well as Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania and Wahkiakum Counties in Washington.
There is no reliable way to move user registration data over from CodeRED, so users of the older Washington County system will need to re-register for Everbridge. All individual accounts and user data will be deleted from the old system, the county said.
Washington County's Everbridge system is active as of Monday and CodeRED messages have stopped, according to county Communications Officer Phillip Bradsford. The county sent out a notification to its roughly 50,000 CodeRED users last week notifying them to switch, he said.
