A customizable, interactive alert system is being launched in Easton.
EastonAlert, powered by the Smart911 device app, is intended to replace the Nixle notification system with one that can be personalized by the user and eliminates unwanted messages.
First introduced in Easton in 2018, Nixle has worked well but doesn’t offer the capabilities of the new system, Frank Caruso, information technology manager, told City Council on Wednesday.
“Future plans call for a product that can do more,” he said.
The city is launching the Rave Mobile Safety platform and Smart911 app this month with a media and community awareness blitz intended to encourage the 1,800 residents signed up for Nixle to convert to EastonAlert and Smart911.
They will be contacting the 7,000 households within the city to encourage them to register, said Caruso, adding that 48 have already done so.
They can remain on Nixle if they choose, but the hope is users will switch over once they learn the benefits of doing so, said Tracey Werner, a marketing consultant who will perform the outreach.
She will do so through traditional means such as press releases, brochures, flyers and inserts in utility bills and through the city’s social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The new notification system is a state-of-the-art platform that will enable the city to send out mass notifications while providing the additional benefit of the Smart911 function, which allows users to decide what type of information they want to include in a user profile.
Those who register can check boxes in their profile to better inform police, fire and medical personnel of the presence of children in a home, pets and the elderly, and medical information that might be pertinent like allergies, people on oxygen or nebulizers, or the handicapped.
“If you have seniors, pets, we can tell fire [personnel] and police what is needed,” Caruso said.
Users with a Smart911 profile who travel outside of Easton within an area that has the service can set it up so that it sends alerts, both local to where you are and from back home.
“You can turn it on or off,” Caruso said.
It can also be set up to receive alerts from any ZIP code in the United States to keep ahead of extreme weather where you are headed or where family may be located.
The EastonAlert system also filters out notifications from outside the city’s 18042 ZIP code that might be considered nuisances to some — “Nixle is a broad system,” he said — and some alerts that didn’t pertain to the city at all were causing some to opt out.
Suggestions for alerts will be made by the fire and police chiefs and the public works director to Mayor Sal Panto Jr., who will authorize what goes out and direct Caruso and his staff to send them.
The city will establish a policy codifying what qualifies as an alert before implementing the notification system in order to establish what should go out, Panto said.
Residents can register at the city’s website, easton-pa.com, or eastonalert.easton-pa.gov.
The service is free to all city residents.
Kevin Duffy is a freelance writer for The Morning Call.
